Spain’s budget for 2022: An assessment
Fecha: noviembre 2021
Desiderio Romero-Jordán, José Félix Sanz
Spanish budget
SEFO, Spanish and International Economic & Financial Outlook, V. 10 N.º 6 (November 2021)
There are three key aspects of Spain’s state budget for 2022: the underlying macroeconomic forecasts; the public revenue and expenditure projections; and, the resulting deficit. The macroeconomic forecasts assume a 6.9% growth in private consumption, a 12.2% increase in investment, and export growth of 10.3%. However, other institutions have estimated GDP growth that is between 0.4 and 1.5 percentage points lower. In regards the second aspect, an unusually strong growth in revenue will be essential to delivering the forecasted deficit in 2021. The budget contemplates growth in non-financial income of 10.8% in 2022 to 279.32 billion euros. However, in the absence of the Next Generation-EU funds, that growth would narrow to 6.8%. Furthermore, various new taxes have yet to be approved and some of the temporary measures, such as the VAT cut on electricity, could be extended. Rising inflation is anticipated to increase structural spending by at least 8 billion euros in 2022. As for the level of public debt, the government is forecasting a reduction from 120% in 2020 to 119.5% in 2021 and 115.1% in 2022. In the absence of a credible fiscal consolidation plan, there are doubts about the feasibility of the deficit reduction path between 2021 and 2024.