The recovery budgets cut investments in the province by up to 38%

In this way, the demarcation is once again aggrieved in the distribution of public funds, with a volume of investment far below that which would correspond to it due to its population volume. The 183.5 million budgeted barely account for 1.4% of the more than 13,000 million that the State will allocate in territorial investments compared to the 3.9% that residents of Alicante account for on the national census.

Likewise, the province comes out badly in the comparison with the rest of the autonomy demarcations, since it will only receive 15.2% of the investments that these accounts contemplate for the whole of the Valencia Community, when it represents 37.5% of the population.

In total, the State will invest 1,208 million in the region next year, which represents an increase in absolute terms of 44 million euros over the forecasts for 2021, but represents a drop in percentage terms, since this figure only adds up to 9 3% of the state total, compared to the 9.6% forecast for this year.

Of this amount, up to 827 million – that is, 68.5% – remain in the province of València, while Castellón will receive 197 million, 16% of the total, a figure even higher than that of Alicante, despite have just a third of its residents.

In this sense, if the breakdown of these amounts is observed, the truth is that the direct investment of the ministries and other public organizations within the Community does correlate with the population weight of each province -Alicante will receive 102.3 of the 307 , 1 million that will arrive this way -, the difference is in the money that is invested through public companies. In this case, Alicante will only have 81.2 of the 901.4 million will come to the region.

In fact, the fall in investments in the province is practically due to the forecasts of Adif and Adif-Alta Velocidad, which in this year’s accounts contemplate up to 134 million in investment, much of it to complete the AVE to Elche and La Vega Low, and that for the next year they barely collect less than 8 million in various projects, including the maintenance of lines in operation.

On the contrary, the investment of the railway operator will add more than 560 million in Castellón and València, mainly due to the execution works of the Mediterranean Corridor, although very large investments are also collected for the Cercanías network and other works in the latter province.

300 million extra

Beyond the provincial distribution, in which he did not enter, the Minister of Finance, Vicente Soler, showed through a statement his “satisfaction” for the increase in resources that the Generalitat will receive with the accounts presented yesterday by María Jesús Montero, and that have yet to be discussed by parliamentary groups. Although the territorialized investment remains below the population weight of autonomy – the 1,208 million represent 9.3% of the state total when the population of the Community is 10.6% -, Soler stressed that the region will benefit from 300 million extra euros thanks to the signing of two unique agreements for the implementation of innovative mobility policies and for the development of sustainable infrastructures.

Agreements that, in addition to the Valencian Community, will only sign the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Catalonia and Aragon. In addition, the autonomy will also enter 52.8 million from the Interterritorial Compensation Fund, so that in total, according to the accounts of the minister, the Community will receive almost 1.600 million, which is 27.3% more.

“The Government has been sensitive to the needs of Valencians and Valencians by increasing resources at a time like the present in which urgent not only economic recovery, but also social and emotional,” said the regional head of Finance.

Along the same lines, Soler insisted that, “beyond the demand for fair investment in the Community, the important thing is that the budget as a whole provides the welfare state with sufficient resources so that we can properly address the policies social, health and educational and we guarantee the economic support and the necessary resources to our companies to help them turn the post-pandemic recovery into an opportunity for growth, transformation and resilience.

In this regard, Minister María Jesús Montero herself insisted yesterday that the State Budgets seek to promote a “fair recovery” and “rebuild the social elevator that broke down in the past crisis.”

For this, as he defended, the public accounts for 2022 are aimed at facing the challenges that the country has pending, among which social cohesion stood out, with measures to benefit especially the youngest and the oldest, but also to improve the productivity of SMEs -through digitization and sustainability- and territorial cohesion. In this regard, he stressed that the autonomies will receive a total of 126,000 million euros, adding the financing system, European funds and extraordinary resources to compensate for the negative settlements of 2020 and the loss of income due to the implementation of the VAT information system that implanted the Government of Rajoy. Likewise, local entities will receive 17% more resources.

Help for municipalities to pay their bills

The 2022 budget project includes a supplier payment mechanism for local entities that fail to comply with the average payment period and which will be endowed with 2,000 million euros. The plan will benefit 1,670 local entities, most of them municipalities, which will have to make an adjustment plan to guarantee the return of the resources. Local entities have 23,350 million in the 2022 budget.

Alicante accumulates an investment deficit of 5,504 million in 20 years

The State is not the only administration that invests less than it should in the province based on its volume of inhabitants. Rather, it is an endemic disease that the main business and economic organizations in Alicante have been denouncing for years, such as the Ineca institute, which yesterday published on its social networks the study it has carried out with the calculation of the investment deficit accumulated only in public works during the last 20 years. Thus, Ineca points out that all kinds of Spanish public administrations have tendered works worth 454,955 million euros between the years 2000 and 2020, of which only 12,446 have been for infrastructures in the province of Alicante, which means 5,504 million less than it should have added, depending on the number of residents. In this sense, only another province, Seville, has a greater deficit than Alicante, with 5,703 million. In third place would be Valencia, where projects for 4,097 million should be tendered to equal the national average, followed by Malaga, which drags a hole, according to these calculations, of 2,895 million euros; and from Cádiz, with 2,851 million. In this sense, it should be noted that one part corresponds to the regional and local administrations, which also highlights the difference in resources available to each of them. Thus, on the opposite side, the province with the highest surplus in this area is Guipuzkoa, which adds 4,862 million more in public works tenders in this period than would correspond to its number of inhabitants, followed by Vizcaya, with 4,368 million, and of Huesca, with 2,961 million.