Seville, (EFE).- Andalusia maintained in the first quarter of the year a public debt below the average of the autonomous communities in relation to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to the data just published by the Bank of Spain, with which, according to the Board, the region is placed “very far from the rest of the underfinanced CCAAs.”
The debt of the Autonomous Community of Andalusia stood at 20.3% of GDP at the end of the first quarter of 2023, while the average for the autonomous communities (23.7%) was 3.4 points higher.
Among the communities with below average regional financing, Valencia is the one with the highest debt to GDP (43.7%), followed by Castilla La Mancha (32.7%) and Murcia (31.7%).
Catalonia (33.1%), without the underfinancing problems of Andalusia but with a similar population and budget, has a debt over GDP of almost 13 points more than Andalusia, for which reason the Minister of Economy, Finance and European Funds , Carolina España, has highlighted that “the policy of containing the debt and the deficit is a hallmark of the Andalusian Government”.
The most significant of these data is found in the comparison of the Andalusian debt with the rest of the communities that have underfinancing problems, due to the current financing model, “expired since 2014, obsolete and harmful to several communities since its approval in 2009”, among them Andalusia, indicates the Board in a statement.
Population and debt of Andalusia
The Valencian Community has, according to data from the Bank of Spain, a debt of 43.7% of its GDP (23.4 points more than Andalusia); that of Castilla La Mancha is 32.7% of GDP and that of Murcia, 31.7%.
The comparison with Catalonia is also “significant”, an autonomous community similar in budget and population to Andalusia, and yet it does not have the underfinancing problems of the Andalusian community, which each year receives a billion euros less, compared to what received by the rest of the autonomous communities.
In 2022 Andalusia was the autonomous community under the common regime that best endured the deficit, deviating just 8 hundredths from the established reference of -0.6% (until its deficit was -0.68%). Only Navarra, with its own economic regime, reduced its deficit in 2022. Of the rest, Andalusia increased it by 0.4%, Galicia by 0.5%, and the Balearic Islands by 0.7%, the Board recalled.
The communities in which the deficit grew the most were the Valencian Community (3.11%), Murcia (2.9%) and Castilla La Mancha (1.92%), the three that drag, with Andalusia, a problem of underfinancing derived from an obsolete regional financing system.
“In the case of Valencia, both the increase in the deficit in 2022 and its final deficit was five times greater than that of Andalusia,” recalled the counselor.
And with regard to debt, in the last four complete years (from 2019 to 2022), Andalusia contained the increase in debt to 7% of GDP, while the Spanish average in this period was 8%. Between 2009 and 2018, the increase in debt was 252%.
Debt of 6.9% in Andalusia in 2009
Andalusia’s debt was 6.9% of GDP in 2009, while in 2018 it was set at 22.1% and, in the last semester of 2022, it was 21.4%.
In this period, the autonomous communities as a whole increased their debt by 215%.
In Andalusia it grew 252% up to 2018. It also grew above communities such as Valencia (192%), with the same underfinancing problems as Andalusia.
However, in 2022 the debt of the Andalusian autonomous community had increased by only 7% compared to 2018, below the Spanish average (8%), and 10 points less than Valencia, underlines the source. EFE