A drift. Beyond a small settlement of accounts between friends on the part of a group of left having lost much of its influence with the Socialists since the arrival to power of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the title of a recent record of the newspaper "El Pais" denouncing an erratic government economic policy is not far from summed up the feeling which predominates by Spain. Facing the unexpected brutality of a recession that leaves its marks in the lives of all the days, the team to power the impression to improvise constantly in the management of a crisis that it denied a year ago still. Its recent decision to increase the tax pressure in 2010, and remove the latest 400 EUR discount available to all taxpayers, is not the first contradiction of a Zapatero that gap, there are four years, lower taxes, was a left policy. The disorder is gaining ground in Socialist ranks of the PSOE, the President's Party. The recent decision of Pedro Solbes, Orthodox Minister of economy and finance until last April, to abandon the policy and his seat in Parliament a was analyzed as a disavowal.
The seriousness of the situation but would require a clear strategy. With the housing bubble, this is a good part of the Spanish economy that, indeed, broke out. The machine has stopped a coup. A rate of growth near the 4 until 2007, the gross domestic product (GDP) increased at a 4.2 fall in annual landslide, at the end of the second quarter of 2009. In the meantime, the number of unemployed rose from 1.7 million (7.9 of the active population) to 4.1 million (17.9). The deflation threat. Excess height of 2.2 of GDP, two years ago, the public accounts will finish the year in the Red at 9.5 for the most optimistic estimates. In two years, more than 120 billion EUR will be thus evaporated in nature. Brussels sees today Spain the sick child of Europe which will be one of the last recession.
Shadowed and carefully ignored by Governments, right and left, during the years of the Wirtschaftswunder who saw the Spaniards spend beyond a reasonable (if public debt is that 40 of the GDP, private debt exceeds 200), the structural ills suffered by the country remain under construction. In addition too great reliance on the construction sector, all the reports, they are the OECD, the World Economic Forum or the own Bank of Spain put highlight the loss of competitiveness of the economy, because of the rigidity of the labour market; ambient bureaucracy; taxation; the huge delay in education and training, not to mention the lack of unity of a market, exploded today between seventeen autonomous communities.
Reform in times of crisis is certainly not easy. José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero refusing for ideological reasons that policies. Considering that this is not to the employees to pay for a crisis of financial and origin of preserving social peace at any price, it is is aligned on the position of trade unions which do not want to hear about reform of the labour market. With no majority in Parliament, where it faces an opposition without concession of a popular party representative power at hand, its retention depends on the voice of the Communist Party, the Greens and the nationalist and separatist formations. It attempts to coax the former with a phraseology has nothing of Social-Democrat and the latter with cheques. Far from an attempt to regain control to centralize the efforts of the countries to deal with the situation, he still dropped ballast, recently, to the autonomies leaving a larger share of the tax pie.
The Spanish President was thus reduced to at the outset its scope of intervention in the short term, to the clogging of the many gaps that appear here and there. Local 8 billion investment plan allowed to local municipalities to improve their roads and maintain more than 400,000 jobs building firms, but the measure, limited in time, is meet the needs of productive investment of the Spain. To add to the disorder, this piecemeal policy was not without friction. The case-sensitive assistance plan had to be reviewed twice before giving a first effect on auto sales. Announced in early summer, the creation of an RMI for the unemployed at the end of rights gave rise the week last negotiations of last minute to set the date of its application. The Bill has almost doubled as a result.
The Government has a bill of sustainable economy whose ambition is to change the productive model of the Spain certainly under the elbow. But just presented, it appears to have the lead in the wing. To accompany the next increase in fiscal pressure, which match an increase in direct taxes with VAT, it is indeed foreseen a freeze on expenditures of the State which could affect the vested envelopes infrastructure and research and development. Be the same tools on which must rely on the major new reform!
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