In a column dated September 25 on the fiscal deficit, Mr. Martí Parellada argued that the possibility of different methods and criteria in its preparation, the lack of consensus and the dispersion of the results invalidated the preparation of the fiscal balances carried out by the Government of Catalonia. We couldn’t disagree more.
He also argues that the lack of consensus on the criteria to be used to prepare fiscal balances prevents their consideration. The Spanish State published the fiscal balances of the central Administration with the seventeen autonomies only once. It was 2008 referring to 2005. He did it by two methods, each one with different possibilities that did not differ too much in the results. They have not been recalculated. If shared criteria existed then, what makes them not so now? The problem is not the lack of consensus on the criteria, it is the displeasure with the results.
The Catalan Government uses an academically endorsed methodology, in compliance with a legal mandate and after being submitted without objection to the advisory council (Capec), which includes two economists specializing in fiscal balances. The fiscal balances prepared by the Generalitat are estimated by the two methodologies that economic science has developed for their calculation. Your choice is neither interchangeable nor capricious. Each method obeys different objectives. Its existence should not be presented as a problem, but as a necessity.
The author of the article states that he misses estimates based on the unbalanced State budget, that is, with the deficit presented by the budget. Every deficit generates a debt and, sooner or later, this debt has to be paid. Is an estimate of fiscal territorial imbalances conceivable without taking into account this generated debt? Is considering the income and expenses of a territory without contemplating that it will have to take charge at some point of the part of this debt that is attributable to it (even without being responsible, as has historically happened to Catalonia)? Well, this is what seems to be proposed. The neutralization of the public deficit in the estimation of fiscal balances is not an option, it is an obligation.
