The Tax Authority criticizes the "total and absolute" lack of information to know the impact of the recovery plan

Cristina Herrero, president of the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (Airef), has criticized this Tuesday the Government's information model on the progress in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan. "We have a total and absolute lack of information to have an estimate of the recovery plan," Herrero assured at the opening of the second day of the UIMP summer courses in Santander, organized by the Association of Economic Information Journalists (Walking).

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Herrero has been critical of how the Executive has presented the documentation and has assured that despite the fact that the budget execution is high, there is a lack of "national accounting" data where the concrete execution can be verified. "There is not much information on the behavior and materialization of investments, which makes it difficult to make an estimate," insisted Herrero, who succeeded the current Minister of Social Security, José Luis Escrivá.

The head of Airef has indicated that the Government's response is that "there is a lot of information". However, she understands that the one addressed is "very scattered, dispersed and based on milestone achievements, which are more formal." “It is difficult to assess the impact of the plan on the economy in this way.”

Herrero has pointed out that this is a problem that is not unique to the central government and that the Autonomous Communities are also encountering problems in implementing the measures of the Recovery Plan. “All Public Administrations have the plan as their top priority, but the resources they have are scarce”, he underlined, referring to the enormous work of the teams at the different levels of the administration, especially those that must complement European aid with “traditional” community-funded plans.

The Airef is the independent body in charge of analyzing the economic and fiscal stability of the public accounts, both of the central government and of the autonomies. In this role, Herrero has recognized that Spain is in "a positive fiscal situation", with a downward evolution of the deficit and the debt. However, he has recalled that this reality is "fragile" due to the different uncertainties that exist.

"The planned reduction is only based on growth and the withdrawal of measures in the face of the health and economic crisis, but there is no other measure that justifies additional reductions," assured the president of Airef, who recalled the need to that the different levels of the administration create a "medium-term" roadmap. She has pointed out, in this sense, that the justification of "uncertainty" for not making forecasts of the fiscal path of public accounts "is not valid" and that "we must assume that this uncertainty will continue in the future". Thus, she believes that "medium and long-term" planning will serve to give "confidence" to the markets, since the ECB's purchase program ends.

Herrero has recognized that for the public accounts “inflation is good in the short term”, as long as it produces an increase in tax revenues. It is estimated by Airef that for each point of inflation an additional 2,000 million euros are collected. However, he has assured that "it negatively affects the short term." “It has an impact on the debt portfolio and interest payments, each point, about 700 million”, he pointed out. Added to this are some 1,500 million more cost in pensions for each point of inflation.