The PP spokesman in the Cáceres Provincial Council, José Ángel Sánchez Juliá, has proposed that 13 of the 19 million euros of the remainder of the institution that are not incorporated into the 2022 Budget be allocated to various aid plans for municipalities to alleviate the rise in the prices of construction materials, of fuels, for the elaboration of a plan against financial exclusion and to promote the housing rehabilitation program.
Sánchez Juliá explained that this money would be used in a municipal compensation plan in the face of the increase in the cost of construction materials, endowed with 6.5 million euros, to alleviate the review of public sector contracts in the face of the rise Of the prices.
A support plan is also requested for municipalities in view of the increase in energy and fuel costs, endowed with 4.5 million euros, since the “continuous rises in the price of electricity, gas and various fuels are putting test the municipal budgets”, and that the Rehabilitation Plan be recovered, with one million euros, to help young people not have to leave their towns.
The ‘popular’ also propose a plan to combat financial exclusion, endowed with at least 1 million euros, as requested by the Popular Group. “We are witnessing how, month after month, bank offices are closed in our towns, as the residents of the affected municipalities manifest themselves and nobody is doing anything,” said the spokesman.
“In short, we propose to invest in our municipalities, face day-to-day problems but also put growth levers to face the future with guarantees,” Sánchez Juliá stressed this Wednesday at a press conference in which he also criticized the drop budget execution of the Cáceres deputation in 2021.
Low budget execution
And it is that, as he has pointed out, the Cáceres Provincial Council has only executed 66.5% of its budget last year, “the lowest execution of the last 7 years”, pointed out Sánchez Juliá, who has stressed that “until In the year 2020, the year of the pandemic where everything stopped, where we were confined to our homes for months, there was a greater execution than this year 2021, and this is tremendously worrying.
“If we analyze this execution by chapters, we see how the Cáceres Provincial Council executes its personnel and operating expenses, executes current and capital transfers but abandons the most important role it has, and more so in these moments of crisis, which is its role investor”, he underlined, since “he has only executed 34% of the planned investments”.
In other words, 49.5 million euros that were intended to be invested in the province in 2021 have remained unexecuted, which shows, in the opinion of the PP, that “the PSOE deputation model is to spend more and more on itself itself, become an ATM and invest less and less.
Thus, he has criticized that the biannual investment plan for the years 2021-2022, which the municipalities decided in 2020, “is stopped”, and investment items such as the fight against depopulation (1.7 million), the neighborhood roads with the Junta de Extremadura (2.6 million), the natural pools or the forestry program (5 million), not a single euro has been executed, and in others the percentage does not exceed 5% such as the rural electrification.
To this must be added, as the ‘popular’ spokesman recalled, that for the year 2021 the provincial government “indebted” the deputation by 30 million euros with a loan but that “they have not involved extraordinary investment” and “they have not been able to manage. “And with all this, the government team has closed 2021 in breach of the spending rule by 5 million euros,” he pointed out.
“Faced with this situation, from the Popular Group, we do not want the council’s resources to continue to increase the remnants, but rather that in such delicate moments they reach the municipalities of the province and serve to put an end to the problems with which the municipalities they are finding each other day by day”, concluded Sánchez Julia.
These proposals will be sent to the provincial government for negotiation and will be presented via motion at the next ordinary plenary session in April.
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.