The State executed 43% of the investments planned for Catalonia in 2022 if the compensation of more than 1,000 million that was paid to Abertis after the end of the concession in 2021, paid the following year, is not taken into account. The information appears in the documentation sent last week to the Budget Office of the Congress of Deputies.
In the first half of 2023, execution is 16.3% as reported by Ara yesterday. The data is also extracted from the budget office. In Madrid it was 52.7% in the same period.
If the payment of compensation to Abertis is taken into account, in that case the execution of investments in the Catalan community in 2022 is 91.2%. In the case of Madrid, the execution was even higher: 179.7%. Sources from the Ministry of Finance headed by María Jesús Montero have assured today that the resources that Catalonia has received in the last two legislatures are superior to those of the PP legislatures.
In the report “Territorial distribution of state public sector investment” in the “real investments” chapter there is an execution of 511%. It is because of a budget for that item of 253 million, 1,291 million have been spent. That amount is where the aforementioned compensation to Abertis lies. In fact, in the report corresponding to the first half of 2022, which is the last one published on the Ministry of Finance’s website, there was already an execution almost five times higher than expected.
In the document that refers to all of 2022, the analysis of investment by ministries also shows the expense incurred by the Ministry of Transportation of 1,274 million, five times more than expected. This is where the compensation to Abertis comes from. The money paid to the concessionaire is not to carry out new construction but to pay for infrastructure already built and used.
The 2022 report on the distribution of investments by autonomous communities was closed on May 30, 2023. That document should have been published on the Ministry of Finance website that day but it was not. Instead, last Thursday, February 28, the text entered the budget office of the Congress of Deputies from where it is accessible to parliamentarians.
The 43.2% budget execution in 2022 is higher than the 35.7% that occurred in 2021.
In the report corresponding to the first half of 2023, it is surprising that a negative investment appears. There are -12,600 euros in investments by the state-owned water company in the basins of Spain. According to the document, the investment is negative because it corresponds to “two reversals of expropriations in the “Canal Segarra-Garrigues” project.”
