The ASG spokesperson alludes to the need for understanding between the different political forces to obtain additional resources from the state and European budget that contribute to the economic recovery of the Islands.
Argues that the approval of the regional budgets must go hand in hand with compliance with the pact for reactivation, updating the financing system or the special plan for tourism recovery, among other actions.
The spokesperson for the Gomera Socialist Group Parliamentary Group (ASG), Casimiro Curbelo, appealed to the unity of the parliamentary groups to join forces and defend the interests of the Canary Islands in Madrid and Europe. “We must not only approve the 2021 regional budgets, but also achieve a series of additional resources at the state and European level that allow us to promote economic reactivation with greater guarantees and meet the demands of citizens,” he highlighted.
Curbelo took advantage of his appearance in the plenary session this Tuesday to emphasize the need to act jointly, far from confrontations and partisan egos, to move together towards the social and economic recovery of the Canary Islands and the country. "The economic and social situation of the Islands requires it, it is a historic moment for everyone to join in and we can unanimously demand that the State meet the demands that the Archipelago needs, since sometimes it responds late or does not sufficiently attend to our singularities," he indicated.
He recognized that the regional accounts, on which the regional Executive is already working, are marked by a global crisis that generates great uncertainty which means that none of the macroeconomic forecasts can provide security to the Canary Islands economy. “We do not know the stability objectives, nor the deficit or the debt, nor do we know the spending agenda or what will be less collected, but we can foresee that there will be a loss of tax revenue that is close to one billion euros,” he commented.
In addition, he alluded to possible cuts by the State, as well as superfluous expenses and duplications. For this reason, he defended not touching taxation and instead opted to improve the management of tax collection, fighting against tax fraud and the underground economy. In addition, he referred to the important reforms at the national level regarding pensions and the reduction of temporary employment in the labor market.
In this sense, he proposed three ways to compensate for the loss of regional resources that pass through the authorization of the State to use as current expenditure the 500 million euros allocated to the 2018 surplus of the highway agreement, update the Regional Financing System that guarantees the maintenance of the 9 billion to attend to essential services, as well as allow an acceptable level of debt, as it has done with other communities.
General State Budgets
Likewise, it required other actions on which the Canary Islands depends on the approval of the General State Budgets, such as compliance with the new REF and the Statute of Autonomy, for which it regretted its possible delay or extension, even temporarily. An objective that must be accompanied by the defense of the Canary Islands as an outermost region of the EU, in addition to complying with and enforcing the content of the Pact for Social and Economic Reactivation and the 140 billion euros from European reconstruction funds.
Finally, he emphasized the importance of carrying out the special plan for tourism recovery, to which Minister Reyes Maroto committed herself during her last visit to the Islands and which was approved in the Senate at the initiative of the ASG senator from La Gomera Fabián Chinea. "I am not going to give up on the central government making this plan and that is why we have to join together to achieve these objectives, since tourism will not arrive overnight, so we must do these tasks to meet the demands of citizens, which will be higher than this year," he stressed.
