This Tuesday, the Council of Ministers approved the non-financial spending limit, that is, the new spending ceiling, which marks a new historical maximum after increasing by 0.5% and is already close to 200,000 million euros. The specific figure is 199.120 million.
As explained by the fourth vice president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, this figure is “realistic” and “prudent”, and offers “margin” to extend if the measures approved were necessary to combat the rise in inflation although, when asked later, she did not want to specify if a decision in this regard has already been made.
“This Government will be guided, like the previous one, by rigor in public accounts and prudence when budgeting by the commitment to fiscal consolidation,” continued Montero, who was certain that the deficit will be reduced to 3%, so Spain would not breach the fiscal rules that come into force next year. However, most national and international organizations do not support the Executive’s forecast, and estimate that the budget deviation will exceed those three points of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
In any case, with the approval of the spending ceiling, the Executive takes another key step in the processing of the General State Budgets (PGE) for 2024, which the Government is sure will be effective in the first quarter of the year. To do this, as EL MUNDO has published, the Treasury has an opinion from the State Attorney’s Office with which Montero assures that he will avoid the ability to veto the deficit objectives that the PP has in the Senate.
The Popular Party has already announced that it will use its majority to reject this path, which is also a fundamental step in the approval of the Budgets. Under normal circumstances, this would force the Executive to use the objectives of the previous public accounts, but since the fiscal rules are suspended during 2023, there are no objectives as such. And that generated an uncertain situation, never experienced before and that los popular They wanted to take advantage of it to torpedo the process.