The Generalitat is forced to extend the budgets again

BarcelonaThe time to draft the budgets has practically run out. The Generalitat will be forced to extend the budgets again, as happened in 2024, 2025, and 2026, when they were managed to be pushed through in July. The electoral climate and the elections on November 29th prevent reaching agreements with the government's partners, ERC and Comuns, as admitted by the Minister of Economy, Alícia Romero, in statements to ARA upon leaving the Economists' Day in Barcelona. Negotiations will have to take place after the elections, a fact that will prevent the approval of the accounts for some months.

The last accounts that were approved on time, that is, before December 31st of the previous fiscal year, were those of 2022, when Jaume Giró was still Minister of Economy and Pere Aragonès was the president. Those of 2023 could not be approved until March of that year and the following ones were extensions of those of 2023 until reaching July of this year, when the current ones came into force. Now these accounts will have to be the basis for operating in 2027 until an agreement can be reached through an extension decree, in which the conditions are outlined, before the end of December.

Legally, the extension decree, which comes into force on January 1st, guarantees the functioning of the administration and the provision of public services to the citizenry while the new accounts are not approved. Therefore, the initial expenditure credits of all departments of the Generalitat and its public sector are extended, with the exception of those intended for programs or actions that end at the end of 2026.

The calling of the general elections has prevented moving forward with the procedures for a financing system that would provide more than 4.6 billion more to Catalonia. And they also make it impossible to implement the forgiveness of up to 17.104 billion euros of debt from the Autonomous Liquidity Fund (FLA) that Catalonia has, the second-highest figure after Andalusia (18.791 billion). This measure would mean a saving in financial costs of more than 200 million per year.

Since 2010, in fifteen fiscal years, they have had to be extended or approved after the deadline, and only in two (2010 and 2022), within what is established. The current difficulty in closing a budgetary agreement has to do with the lack of support, as in previous stages. In the latest extensions, the ERC, which was not in favor of giving an image of great proximity to the PSC, opted to approve a series of credit supplements.

These operations added a total of 3,936.7 million euros to the extended accounts last year, which mitigated the effects of the extension. The last credit supplement was 467.9 million euros and the two previous ones, 2,168 million and 1,301 million, respectively. In 2024, two were made, one of 1,985.9 million and another of 142 million.

The supplements are intended for specific and agreed-upon purposes. In all cases, they are financed with the higher estimated revenues of the fiscal year, coming mostly from the financing system (2025 advance and 2023 settlement).