The Government will not compensate Catalonia next year for the abnormally low budget execution of 2021, which stood at close to 36%. The item allocated to the Catalan community in relation to the rest of Spain is identical to that of the previous budgets, 17.2%.
There is no data for 2022 despite the fact that the Ministry of Finance planned to report the partial execution last Friday. In absolute value, the appropriation for Catalonia for 2023 is 2,309 million euros. But Andalusia will be the autonomy that will receive the most resources: 2,319 million. Madrid, with 1,305 million endowments, will receive 9.7% of the total.
The proof that the budgets are not a true reflection of the investments actually made is the forecast that the railway infrastructure manager Adif itself makes for this year 2022. In the budget project for 2022, Adif recognizes that -to date, with just three months to go before the end of the year– plans to invest 139.4 million euros in the province of Barcelona. It is 18% of the amount consigned in the budgets. This low execution of the railway infrastructure manager occurs the same year that the problems in Rodalies in Catalonia have worsened. Adif sources said that if the provision for high speed is taken into account, the execution reaches 24.7% and they recalled that the execution levels will be similar to those of 2020.
The Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona calculated yesterday that in the community as a whole Adif's budget execution –without taking into account the high speed- will be around 20%.
Adif sources said that the low execution is due to delays due to lack of supplies, the volatility of the prices of raw materials, strikes in the transport sector or lack of professionals. The same sources pointed out that "the mechanisms that we have put in place and that we continue to implement allow us to be optimistic with the execution and exceed those figures that are nothing more than a forecast, which is based on what was executed in the first months of the year." Between June 2018 and June 2022, "the investment made by Adif and Adif AV in Catalonia exceeds 1,000 million", they added.
In the last decade it has been a constant that the budgets recorded a higher investment in Catalonia than in Madrid. Once the real investment has been made, more money has always been spent in the community that houses the capital, as can be seen in the graph. Last year, for example, investment in Madrid almost tripled that of Catalonia.
Another way of analyzing the figures is to put them in relation to the population of each territory. In that case, the budget contemplates for Catalonia an investment of 297 euros per person compared to 193 for Madrid. The Spanish average is 284 euros.
The Foment del Treball employers' association – after positively assessing the provision for this year in Catalonia – asked that in the event that the investment is not executed 100%, the unspent resources “are not lost and are transferred to the Generalitat”. In a similar line, the Chamber of Commerce demanded that the 4,400 million that were not executed in the 2013-2021 period be transferred to Catalonia.
In the last nine years, the average execution of investments in Catalonia has been 63.8%. The year in which it was lowest is precisely the last one, 2021, when it was slightly above 35%.
In the budgets, the Government clarifies that in the case of Catalonia, an additional item of 200 million will be transferred in 2023 to comply with the third additional provision of the Statute, which provides for an investment in Catalonia with respect to the equivalent of its weight in GDP for seven years. Precisely, the budget allocation published yesterday for 2022 does not reach the weight of Catalonia in GDP, which currently stands at around 19%.
