23/07/2015 00:00
TW
0

The debate over financing of the Balearics by central government has been given extra fuel by data that have been released by the national ministry of finance and public administration.
The most recent information - for 2012 - shows that the Balearics contributed 1,330 million euros (in tax receipts) more than it received under the system of tax revenue redistribution, which is the principal means of financing the Spanish regions.
The Community of Madrid had the highest deficit in terms of the imbalance between tax raised and redistributed funding: 19,015 million euros.

Negative balance
This was a negative balance vastly greater than Catalonia with 7,439 million euros.
The Community of Valencia - 1,453 million - is the only other region with a deficit higher than the Balearics.
The four regions - the Balearics, Catalonia, Madrid and Valencia - have consistently expressed their discontent with this system of financing and have called therefore for an alternative method.
The new government in the Balearics has made improved financing one of its priorities: an objective that the previous government under José Ramón Bauzá also had.
All other regions of Spain have positive balances, with Andalusia enjoying one of the healthiest: it received 8,531 million euros more than it contributed to the redistribution system in 2012.
Meanwhile, the Balearic minister of finance, Catalina Cladera, has reacted less than positively to the announcement by national finance minister, Cristóbal Montoro, that he wants to reopen the debate regarding financing.
She is describing it as a “facelift” and one being made only a few months before the general election. Montoro’s move, she says, is designed to show that the government is working on the financing issue but that there won’t be time before the election for the financing system to be revised.
Montoro has sent letters to finance ministers in all the regions proposing that the debate is reopened and that there be a meeting of ministers in September (the election is expected to be held in November).
Cladera was additionally sceptical because there has as yet been no response from Montoro’s ministry to a proposal from the Balearic Government for a meeting of the joint commission of the Hacienda to consider financing issues in a “bilateral manner” and for there to be talks on state investment and the special economic regime for the Balearics.