Thursday, March 28

The Treasury raises the spending ceiling for 2023 to 198,221 million, the highest in history


The Ministry of Finance has set this Tuesday the non-financial spending ceiling for next year at 198,221 million euros, which is the highest figure in history. The increase announced after the Council of Ministers, of 1.1%, maintains the Government’s expansionary policy for the third consecutive year. Despite the progress, Minister María Jesús Montero maintains that the “fiscal responsibility” policy is being followed and maintains her deficit projections.

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The Government has emphasized its objective of having a deficit of 5% for this year and 3.9% for next year. This is the same bar that marked the path of stability that was transmitted in the spring to Brussels. Although, there has been a change between administrations. The Executive reduces the central government’s deficit target for next year to 3.2%, compared to the 3.4% previously set. Those two tenths of a difference will fall on the accounts of the Autonomous Communities, which will see their deficit target relaxed. For their part, the City Councils will have a surplus target of 0.1%, compared to 0.2% previously.

The approval of the spending ceiling is one of the first steps for the formalization of the new General State Budgets, after having already requested a few weeks ago to the different ministries their budget priorities for the following year. For the 2022 accounts, currently in force, the Government set a non-financial spending limit of just over 196,000 million euros, practically matching the forecast that had been applied for the year 2021, despite having 25,600 million of European funds for this course. The spending ceiling for this year was the largest approved for public accounts to date, still affected by some measures due to the health crisis, but before the impact that high inflation and the energy crisis are having.

The spending ceiling set by the Ministry of Finance includes the impact of European funds and quantifies the amount allocated to the Recovery Plan financed by Brussels at just over 25,000 million. If he, Montero has pointed out that the “national” spending ceiling is 173,175 million euros, which represents an advance of 1.9%.

The minister has defended that with the approval of this spending ceiling, the Government “starts up a machinery that will allow the approval of fundamental public accounts”. Now, the coalition Executive will have to agree on the content of the future budgets and, after that, present them in Congress for parliamentary debate. If it goes ahead, it will foreseeably be the last public accounts, since the general elections are scheduled for 2023. “If anything has been shown, it is that this government has been practicing budgetary responsibility that allows it to protect the social majority of this country,” Montero defended during the press conference.

Montero is now also opening a period with the rest of the administrations to outline the income objectives that they can count on for preparing their own budgets. “Tomorrow and Thursday we will have the opportunity to transfer all the information to the Communities on the deliveries on account and the resources”, he pointed out. “That number will increase significantly,” he emphasized.

The minister pointed out that the elaboration of the expenditure ceiling for next year has been carried out taking into account the forecast of the entry into force of the two new taxes announced by the Executive: on electricity companies and on banks. Both aspire to achieve 3,500 million euros for the next course for the extraordinary benefits, although the Government still does not advance how it will be done. PSOE and United We Can are expected to register the measure in Congress this week, for parliamentary processing. Montero has ruled out, yes, that the prohibition of transferring the cost to citizens will lead to criminal liability, as Podemos had requested.



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