The Next Generation EU funds have allocated 92,256 million non-refundable euros to Spain, 81,964 initially and 10,306 million in the addendum in June of this year. The Government, on the website of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Program (PRTR), offers reports on its execution. However, these reports do not provide information on aspects of such interest as the degree of execution of the funds, their destination by economic sector and the type of company they benefit.
In order to achieve this objective, we take as a starting point the list of tenders and subsidies published on the PRTR web portal, which is complemented with information from the Public Sector Contracting Platform (tenders) and the National Subsidies Database . The analysis carried out lasts until the end of 2022, so the starting reference figure is the funds that Spain had allocated up to that date (81,964 million euros). In total, until that date, the number of funds called via Next Generation EU funds amounts to 35,828 million euros, which represents 43.7% of the total funds allocated.
However, one thing is called funds and another (smaller) is the amounts already resolved and which are those that have already reached the real economy. This is due to the fact that there are calls still under evaluation of the offers presented and others published and within the deadline for submitting offers, so that the amount resolved is 16,349 million euros, which implies a percentage of execution of the funds of 45 .6%.
In the case of funds granted to companies, according to an article published a few weeks ago by the Funcas analysis center, it is the large ones that concentrate the majority (59.3%), followed by the medium-sized ones (20.1%). %) and small (14.4%). Microbusinesses, which are those with less than 10 employees, have received 6.1%. Therefore, of every 100 euros of aid granted to companies, SMEs have received 40.7%, with large companies benefiting the most. When the contracting/granting body is the State, the large companies have received 64% of the total funds granted.
Taking into account the sector of activity declared by the successful bidder/beneficiary companies, the services sector is the one that absorbs the largest amount, specifically 46.9% of the total, closely followed by construction (41.6%). Industry appears far behind (9.7%), with the weight of energy (1.3%) and the primary sector (0.5%) being very small.
In the case of construction, 96% of the funds granted come from contracts through public bidding. Of these, the tenders that derive from ADIF orders (42% of the total) awarded to companies in the construction sector to finance railway infrastructure stand out.
If we broaden the focus and go down in detail by branches of activity, within services, information and communications stands out (whose investments materialize in broadband infrastructure and aid for R&D projects), since it concentrates 15.4%. of the total. Commerce follows closely (12.1%), highlighting the purchase of electric buses and high-tech healthcare equipment from marketing companies, and legal, engineering and consulting activities (8.2%). Within the industrial sector, the branch that most benefits from Next Generation EU funds is the automotive sector (3.6%).
What all this information shows us is that we have not yet reached the halfway point in the execution of the Next Generation EU funds, since those called (35,828 million euros) represent less than half (43.7%) of the total assigned to Spain until the end of 2022. Given that there is time until August 2026 to execute the funds, there are still more than half to invest in less than three years remaining until that date. On the other hand, given that the degree of execution of the funds called on that date was 45.6%, this adds more pressure to be able to execute all the Next Generation EU funds on time before August 2026, which is why it is necessary accelerate the pace of execution, even more so, taking into account the new funds granted in the June 2023 Addendum (10,306 million euros).
