The Bank of Spain does not believe the path of deficit reduction that the Government promises. Or, at least, it is absolutely unaware of how the Executive is going to bring the budget deviation up to 3% this year, and will continue to contain it in the coming years.. “We don't see where this Government reduction of 3% downwards is going to come from,” acknowledged yesterday the general director of Economy and Statistics of the organization, Ángel Gavilán.

“That does not mean that [the path] is unreal,” he stressed at the press conference in which he presented the new macroeconomic projections of the Bank of Spain.. “Only we don't see how it will go down,” he stressed.

According to these new forecasts, the deficit will be 3.8% this year and will decline in 2024 to 3.4%, which would mean that Spain would fail to comply with the 3% limit imposed by the fiscal rules that will be in place again next year. vigor. And in the next two years, the expected figures are 3.6% in both cases.

The Executive, on the other hand, maintains that the deviation will be 3%, that is, that it will comply with the aforementioned rules, and that the path will be completed with a figure of 2.7% in 2025 and 2.5% in 2026. The divergence is evident and notable at a point in which, in addition, the Ministry of Finance has stuck out its chest on numerous occasions as a sign of its commitment to fiscal consolidation and budget balance.

“We make our forecasts based on a case of no policy change,” explained Gavilán, which is the same assumption on which the Government presented its estimates in the Budget Plan sent to Brussels in October.. In that document, the Executive did not include any additional measures aimed at containing the deficit, and that is why the head of the BdE points out that he “does not see” how it will be reduced.. Because there is no additional explanation, only a promise that the Bank of Spain does not share.

In its new projections, the Bank of Spain also warns the Executive that the Spanish economy is entering a three-year period of low growth. So much so that throughout the period analyzed, that is, between 2024 and 2026, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will always grow below 2%. “Economic growth, after having slowed down in the second half of the year, will mark a significantly lower pace of progress in the next three years,” said Gavilán.. Once the GDP level prior to the pandemic has been recovered, he added, Spain returns to rebounds closer to its potential growth, which is over 1.5%.

The regulator is also extremely concerned about low productivity and the stagnation of per capita income. «In terms of per capita income, the pre-pandemic level of activity has not yet been recovered. And not only that, but a new gap would have been created between the European Union that would remain quite stable for the coming years. Why are we having problems growing in per capita terms? Because we are having very little productivity growth. In four years, productivity per hour has only grown one point. A very modest growth,” Gavilán developed. And he left a reflection, a warning rather, aimed directly at the Government: “We must not be complacent.”