Balearics seventh most indebted region

THE Balearic islands are the seventh region where there was most debt in 2005 with a total of 1'536 million euros, a figure which represents an increase of 62 percent in comparison with 2004 and which is 6.8 percent of the gross domestic product of the islands, according to the latest figures published by the Banco de España. Valencia, Barcelona and Madrid together had 60 percent of the total debt in autonomous regions in 2005, which rose to 56'123 million euros, an increase of 8 percent with regard to 2004. In fact, the autonomous region with most debt in 2005 was Catalonia with 13'240 million euros, almost 25 percent of the total debt in all the autonomous regions. After Catalonia came Madrid with 10'099 million euros, which took second place in 2005 from Valencia which had a lesser total debt of 10'085 million.
Then came Andalucia with 7'352 million euros of debt, Galicia (3'381 million), Castilla and Leon (1'789 million), the Balearics (1'536 million), the Canaries (1'475 million), Castilla-La Mancha (1'351 million), the Basque region (1'140 million) and Aragon (1'153 million). Below the 1'000 million mark were Asturias with 803 million, Extremadura with 783 million, Murcia (691 million), Navarra (646 million), Cantabria (411 million) and La Rioja (190 million). So La Rioja was the autonomous region with the least debt in 2005. In fact this was a drop of 1.5 percent in debt for this region and equivalent to 2.8 percent of its Gross Domestic Product.