The Valencian Community, Murcia, Catalonia and Madrid will be the four regions that will say goodbye to 2024 at the top of their GDP deficit, which the majority of autonomous communities will experience, according to the latest forecasts from the Foundation for Applied Studies. Economy (Fedea).
Following these estimates, nine of the 17 communities will end 2024 with a negative GDP balance: Valencian Community (-1.8%), Murcia (-1.6%), Catalonia (-0.7%), Madrid (-0.5%), Castile-La Mancha (-0.3%), Basque Country (-0.3%), Andalusia (-0.3%), Extremadura (-0.1%) and Castile and León (-0.1%).
On the contrary, eight communities will close the year with a positive result: Asturias (1.2%), Canary Islands (0.9%), Navarra (0.7%), Cantabria (0.7%), Balearic Islands (0.6%), Galicia (0.4%) , La Rioja (0.3%) and Aragon (0.1%).
Fedea underlines this in a new issue of its CCAA Tax and Financial Observatoryled by José Ignacio Conde-Ruiz, Manuel Díaz and Carmen Marín, who analyze the region’s income and expenditure until July of this year and make a estimation of the regional budget balance at the end of the year.
Generally speaking, Fedea considers that The deficit of the autonomous communities will end the year at 0.4% of GDPhigher than the negative balance of 0.3% forecast by the Independent Authority for Budgetary Responsibility (AIRef) and well above the government’s forecasts in terms of budget balance, of 0%.
“If our forecast is confirmed, it would not only be bad data given the growth in resources experienced by the regions in 2024, more than 20 billion from the Autonomous Financing System (SFA) compared to 2023, but this would jeopardize the path to reducing the deficit of all Public Administrations announced by the Government for this year”, he warns.
And he says that with the European Union’s new budgetary rules for next year, “fiscal consolidation in Spain can no longer be delayed.” “This should be one of the main tasks facing the Spanish government”for which “the participation of the CCAA should be fundamental, given that this administration represents the majority of public consumption”, he indicates.
Fedea specifies, however, that its estimate for the end of this year represents an “improvement” compared to the end of 2023, where the regional deficit was 0.9% of GDP.
