fund
Catalan Cooperation Fund in Algeria to back Western Sahara
Delegation also including MPs visit Sahrawi camps: 'Morocco blocks any possibility for dialogue'
Catalan Cooperation Fund sends €741,000 to humanitarian projects during first year of Ukraine war
Effort focused on care of vulnerable groups such as children, women and ethnic minorities
Pushing for a pension system reform, Spain proposes incentives for late retirement
Government calls social security reform "urgent" amid economic turbulences
Spanish government to head management of EU recovery fund with regional 'multi-level cooperation'
Torra sits out regional presidents' conference: "My duty is not to just go get my photo taken"
Catalonia 'ready' to benefit from EU recovery plan as €31bn scheme presented
Digitalization and ecologic transition among items in new strategy as Catalan government hopes to receive 21% of European resources allocated to Spain
Torra accuses Spain of ‘suffocating’ Catalan finances in regional Covid-19 fund
Madrid defends "unprecedented" €16bn transfer plan to Spanish regions
Sánchez calls for ‘fiscal co-responsibility’ for coronavirus relief funds
Spanish president announces there will be an official day of mourning during Phase 1 of lockdown de-escalation process
Catalan government launches committee for economic plan and social protection
Cabinet commits to 'expansive economy policy' as Spain announces relief fund of €16bn for regions
Catalan government calls for coronavirus relief fund from Spain
Vice president requests €4 billion from Spanish government to cover health costs and help rebuild economy
Spain’s former vice president and IMF head enters jail
Former People’s Party official Rodrigo Rato faces sentence of 4.5 years in jail for embezzlement
IMF urges Spain to provide Autonomous Communities with “greater power to mobilise their own revenues”
Autonomous Communities in Spain should have “greater power to mobilise their own revenues”. This is one of the main pieces of advice the International Monetary Fund (IMF) gives in its monitoring report of the Spanish economy. The text stresses that “without reforms”, the Spanish regional financing framework remains “a risk for the achievement of fiscal targets”. “Reforms should aim to improve regions’ incentives to comply with fiscal targets while accounting for their different economic capacities”, adds the report. In this regard, it proposes a “more automatic and stricter enforcement of targets” and giving the regions greater autonomy to mobilise their incomes. Furthermore, the IMF urges Spain to reduce value-added tax exemptions and excise duties and environmental levies.
Spanish Government rejects reviewing strict 2016 deficit targets for Autonomous Communities
Despite the fact that all the Autonomous Community governments that are not run by the People's Party (PP) requested the Spanish Executive – run by the PP – to allow them a greater deficit in 2016 and that Spain's independent fiscal authority Airef also recommended granting regional governments greater deficit targets for next year, the Spanish Finance Minister, Cristóbal Montoro, has rejected doing so. In 2016, the Autonomous Communities will have to close their budgets with less than a 0.3% deficit, "an absurd" and "unrealistic" figure according to the Catalan Finance Minister, Andreu Mas-Colell, who was recently awarded an honorary PhD in Economics by the University of Chicago. The Catalan Government asked for a 0.88% deficit target for 2016. Besides this, next year the Catalan Executive will receive €1.2 billion that should have already been transferred by the Spanish Executive but was not, due to Montoro's tax revenue miscalculations. In addition to this, since economic activity is growing, the Spanish Government will increase the Catalan Executive's funds by €700 million each year from 2016 onwards.