Ten years after the fiscal pact championed by Artur Mas for the benefit of the independence process was buried, a group of Catalan business associations (with the exception of Foment del Treball and the Cercle d'Economia) have put on the table the need to end with the fiscal deficit suffered by Catalonia and its underfinancing. They have not wanted to pronounce on the way to achieve it, but they have made it clear that their model is not that of the Basque quota and that at the same time they want to maintain inter-territorial solidarity.
The fiscal deficit - which the Generalitat calculates at 20,000 million euros per year - are the resources that Catalonia contributes to the State and that it does not recover via investment and public spending in the territory. It is a figure questioned by the State and by other economists. The manifesto has been signed by the business associations Amec and FemCat, the Barcelona Chamber, the Girona Chamber, the Sabadell Chamber, the employers Cecot and Pimec and the Economistes pel Benestar collective.
“Catalonia must have the capacity to collect and decide on the destination of the resources it generates with the aim of enhancing the competitiveness of its economy and situating the well-being and progress of its citizens at the level of their effort, without avoiding reasonable collaboration in territorial balance and solidarity”, reads the report.
The spokesperson for Economistes pel Benestar, Joan B. Casas, explained yesterday during the presentation of the document that the signatory organizations have agreed on the diagnosis that, in addition to underfinancing, there is a loss of competitiveness. Between 2000 and 2019, the growth of consumption per inhabitant in Catalonia was 1.7% while in the rest of Spain it reached 8.6%. The GDP per capita in the community was 14.2%, lower than the 17.8% of the rest of the State.
The claim for an improvement in financing comes after it has ceased to be at the center of public debate in recent years. Casas believes that this fact is essentially due to two reasons. The first is because the independence process pursued higher objectives and the second, because it is common for the population to end up integrating large macomagnitudes as normal, such as underfinancing, says the economist. The report recalls that if Catalonia had a model like the Basque quota, citizens would have 84% more resources.
The objective of the group is that more organizations join the demand. Precisely for this reason the signatories have not wanted to propose what the solutions are, because each one of the signatories has their own model, ranging from independence to an improvement in the financing system, including the fiscal pact. For example, the president of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, Mònica Roca, continues to defend independence.
Foment, the great Catalan employers' association, has not made statements about why it has not signed the manifesto. On the other hand, Jaume Guardiola, president of the Cercle d'Economia, declared yesterday that he shares the diagnosis of the Economistes pel Benestar group but that the institution has its own channels to issue opinions. Guardiola celebrated that the improvement of the financing of Catalonia is back in the public debate after in recent years "the political class has been in other stories and has turned the page on something that was considered autonomy."
