The acting Minister of Finance and Public Function, María Jesús Montero, maintains that there will be new General State Budgets in 2024, despite the tight schedule and when not even the investiture debate of the PP candidate has yet been held, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, “if President Sánchez’s inauguration takes place soon.” Montero does not move a line in the speech that she has been maintaining in recent months, despite the fact that the acting Government has not yet been able to launch all the budget machinery.
In statements to the press in Brussels, where he has traveled to present the priorities of the Spanish presidency of the EU in a European parliamentary commission, Montero explained that the Ministry he directs is working with “all scenarios” and that he hopes that the accounts They may be approved “for January 1” and that “if they have to be a few days later, then they will be a few days later”, but that in any case the aspiration of the Government in office is to have some PGE for the year 2024 .
The minister also wanted to emphasize the importance of having the approved accounts to “continue consolidating the economic policies that the Government is developing” and has celebrated the “success” of the economic growth figures, maximum after the upward revision (the third for these figures) carried out this week by the National Institute of Statistics. The INE confirmed that the Spanish economy grew three tenths more in 2022, to 5.8%, and the 2021 advance that it had calculated increases almost one point, to 6.4%.
Montero responds to Catalonia
Montero has also responded to the Catalan Minister of Economy, Natàlia Mas, that the Generalitat has the “reference parameters” and has sufficient “instruments” to prepare its own accounts for 2024, although the national ones have not yet been approved and the governments territorial entities do not have the data on deliveries on account that correspond to them.
“They know what the reference parameters are, they have instruments to prepare the budget, although it is true that we all like to have figures officially communicated by the Ministry of Finance,” he noted. Furthermore, he recalled that, although Congress has not approved any Stability objectives, the autonomies have the “reference” of the Stability Plan sent to the European Commission.
Last Friday, the Catalan Minister of Economy sent a letter to the Minister of Finance demanding the estimate of income that Catalonia will receive from the financing model, since they represent “more than 80% of the general resources available to the Generalitat.” In the letter, she also called the plan to impose balanced budgets on communities in 2024 as “unfair and disproportionate”, and therefore requested a margin of at least 1% of GDP.
A permanent formula to tax large fortunes.
The acting minister has also revealed that the intention of the current Government is to study with the autonomous communities a permanent “formula” to tax large fortunes with the aim of making them contribute a “proportional measure” to the public coffers. She pointed this out after being asked about the collection of 623 million obtained from the temporary tax on large fortunes fortunes fortunes The possibility of the Eject Ivo making this tax permanent, which for now is established for 2023 and 2024.
“We have to study its performance and we also want to do it at the mercy of the debate on regional financing because the taxes on wealth and assets are expressed in different figures and we have to have the ability among all of us to discuss what is the most effective way to make that fortune pay,” said Montero, who has made it clear that, until this debate takes place, the temporary solidarity tax will be maintained.
