At the latest meeting of the Council for Fiscal and Financial Policy, the national minister for finance, Cristóbal Montoro, has rejected calls from various Spanish regions for a deficit target of 0.3% in 2016 to be raised.
With the support of regions governed by the Partido Popular, ten regions in all including the Balearics, will have to accept this target.
Montoro accepts that this will be very demanding but has stressed that it is a target that is common to all regions which have, in the past few years, made great efforts to address deficit levels.
With Montoro at the meeting was the industry minister from Castile and Leon, Pilar del Olmo, who emphasised that the government was clear in its intentions (to reduce deficit levels) and was not about to change.
In the case of her region, she said that more deficit had not been sought; rather, there was a desire for a reform of the model of financing and so more by the way of revenues from the government.
As far as the situation in the Balearics is concerned, this financing will increase next year in that the islands will receive 130 million euros more, but this will be largely offset by the need to cut the 0.7% deficit for this year to 0.3% in 2016.
The Balearics, given something with one hand but having something taken away with the other, will in effect see its resources frozen in 2016. There will, nonetheless, be 659 million more from the final accounts for 2014, but even this isn’t as generous as might appear as the government had miscalculated 2014 figures and is now paying the difference on what should have been paid.
The Balearics will, however, pay less next year into the “solidarity” fund for distribution to other regions: this will be 780 million euros, down from 867 million this year.