It is systematic, recurrent and lacks transparency. The difference between State investment planned in Catalonia and the one actually executed is large and exceeds the state average and, especially, that of the Madrid’s community. “It can be measured from the right side, from the wrong side, but every year it occurs,” he explains. Joseph Ramon Rovirahead of the Studies Service of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce. In the period 2015-2021, the average degree of execution of state investments in Catalonia was 60.3%, when the regionalizable average was 74.2% and that corresponding to the Community of Madrid, 128.7% .
The straw that broke the camel’s back is the data for 2021, with an execution of 35.8% in Catalonia compared to the 71% regionalizable average and more than 180% in Madrid. The works related to rail transport stand out for their low level of execution, with 23.9% of Adif and 4.6% of Adif-Alta Velocidad. In any case, what stands out is not a single exercise, “but the trend”, which is not corrected, explains Rovira. “You don’t have to look for black hands but you have to ask the Government why it happens,” he adds.
Joaquim Llansó, president of the Chamber of Construction Contractors of Catalonia, integrated in Foment, attributes this gap to the “lack of political will”. And the problem is that the difference between what was budgeted and what was executed has become “structural.” One of the big problems is the lack of breakdown of projects, which makes it difficult to know which ones should have been carried out and were not carried out, explains the Director of Infrastructures of the Chamber, Alicia Casart.
In any case, if organizations and entities with different ideologies and tendencies coincide in any complaint, it is in this: the low real execution of investments in Catalonia compared to the average and the investment deficit that is dragging as a consequence of it. There they coincide from the Generalitat and the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce until Workforce Development, Pimec or the unions.
The Minister of Transport, Rachel Sanchez, on a visit to the SIL logistics show, rejects “a story exclusively around cold figures”. And he reiterates that “since 2008, this government has invested more in Catalonia than in any other. We have to do a project-by-project analysis and see the situation of each of them when the current government arrived,” he added. The Ministry hastened on Monday to affirm that “soon” the Bilateral Commission of Infrastructures will meet to analyze with the Generalitat the investment projects and the degree of execution.
For his part, the ‘conseller’ of Economy, James Giro, has already put the cry in the sky. In his opinion, this figure is “sad, disappointing and surprising.” From his point of view, this evolution is a “terrible injustice” and the data is so “bloody, persistent and humiliating” as to want that “Catalonia is a new State of Europe“.
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The truth is that there are those who seek political explanations. There has to be negotiation and since at least 2017, the year of the referendum, I doubt there has been,” he says. Marti Butcher, who was number two of Antoni Castells in the Ministry of Economy of the socialist Antoni Castells. In any case, he recalls that this gap was corrected to some extent by the third additional provision of the Statute, which provided for mechanisms so that state public investment in Catalonia would be in accordance with its weight in the economy as a whole (GDP). But that was stopped complying with the Government of Mariano Rajoy and, despite the promises, the Executives of Pedro Sanchezwhich worked with State budgets extended in 2019 and 2020. According to the Ministry of Economy, there are pending arrears due to an investment deficit of about 3,000 million, from 2009 to 2013.
A study carried out by the Generalitat and AQR-Lab on the accumulated impact of the State investment deficit in Catalonia between 2012 and 2017 ensured that it subtracted 9.8 points from GDP, some 23,820 million euros in 2018 value. foster, For its part, it demanded before the pandemic broke out an extraordinary financial boost of 10,000 million between 2019 and 2023 to finish the strategic infrastructures already tendered in Catalonia and estimated the investment deficit in recent years at 28,000 million, which has already risen to 34,000 million a few months ago.