Regrets the “deficiencies in informative quality” of the 2023 General State Budget project
MADRID, 18 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF), Cristina Herrero, lamented this Tuesday in Congress the “deficiencies in information quality” of the 2023 General State Budget project, with an absence of information in terms of accounting of of more than 1,200 million euros, and has ensured that the body came to doubt whether to grant its guarantee.
Thus, before the Budget Committee of the Lower House, to which he has gone to explain the new accounts, Herrero has acknowledged that “a profound debate” was raised in the body itself about what to do, since the law does not provide for a pronouncement on the macroeconomic table published in July and on which the accounts were likely to be built.
Then his forecast was for a growth of 2%, compared to 2.7% of the Government, and now the worsening of the economic perspectives lowers it to 1.5% by 2.1% of the Executive.
In addition to claiming that this macroeconomic table has the endorsement of AIReF — “it is not that it endorses it for the sake of it, it has to endorse the table to guarantee that the subsequent budgetary scenario is based on realistic forecasts–, Herrero has requested that it be included in it a forecast of income and expenses, as well as measures of fiscal policy.
In the case of these accounts, the president of AIReF has criticized that “part of the revenue closing forecasts (for this year 2022) are not realistic”. For Herrero, the government’s decision to underestimate revenues in order to have a greater margin later — a decision made explicit by the minister María Jesús Montero herself — “is not prudent”, based on the available liquidation data.
Likewise, he has criticized the fact that in the preparation of these accounts, and therefore the Government’s economic planning, the package of measures to deal with the energy and price crisis is not incorporated, even announcing additional measures “a week after presenting the Budget”.
In addition, Herrero misses “relevant information in terms of national accounting”, since the accounts do not include it “neither in terms of adjustments nor in the execution of the Recovery Plan.” “Yes, there is an execution forecast, but they are not national accounting data,” he specified, “they are budget data converted to national accounting terminology.”
The president of AIReF has said that this problem “is not new” and that “it has not been published for years”, and has quantified that the lack of these adjustments “would amount to a little more than one percentage point of GDP”.
