Despite having elaborated its economic forecasts before the budgets were announced – even, that the Government will announce measures such as the donation of 400 euros to young people for “cultural activities” – the data of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) constitute
That Spain does not have a fiscal adjustment plan.
This is how the economic forecasts of the institution are clear, published this week.
The IMF, thus, puts in black over white that the reduction of the deficit and the debt of Spain is something merely cyclic.
Beyond 2023, when the ‘rebound’ post-Covid-19 concludes, Spain will permanently maintain more deficit than before the pandemic.
In fact, between 2023 and 2026, this imbalance will remain stable in the fringe of 4.2% -4.4% of GDP.
When Pedro Sánchez arrived at the Moncloa, in 2018, the deficit was 2.5%.
It is true that, as the IMF declares in its ‘Fiscal Monitor’ report, published yesterday, in most countries fiscal policies remain expansive.
But it is also that in many of them the deficit will fall much more quickly than in Spain.
The institution foresees that, in the developed world, the ‘red numbers’ of the states return by 2026 to the level they had before the pandemic.
In Spain, in that year, the deficit will be 1.4 points greater.
It is not just stay behind partners and competitors;
It is also losing by winning, since no other country will see its ‘red numbers’ grow so much.
The only consolation is that public debt will grow relatively little, at a percentage of a percentage point of GDP.
But that is due to a factor on which Spain does not have the capacity of influence: the inflation of the eurozone.
If prices are accelerated and the European Central Bank (ECB) decides to raise the fastest interest rates than the IMF and the market foresee, the cost of the Spanish debt will increase in a spectacular manner, and, with it, the size of
That liability.
That is an impossible, but not unlikely scenario.
In the United States, the IMF, the Federal Reserve, and the Government of Joe Biden seem to have been wrong to predict that the rebound of prices was going to be a very brief phenomenon.
Inflation in the US is growing at 5.4% per year, and the Federal Reserve will have to abandon your debt purchase policy much more quickly than you planned to try to prevent prices from coming out of control.
The IMF data also reflect the continuation of the fracture of the eurozone in the two groups that have marking economic tensions in Europe since the euro crisis exploded: the north, characterized by extreme austerity, and the south, which
It stands out for its deficit.
Thus, the Netherlands, Austria, and Germany manage to reduce its public debt – by itself, reduced – in the coming years, while Belgium, Spain, and France, do not get it.
Hyperended Italy and Greece do cut their debt, although in their case it is about making need virtue.
This situation confirms the recovery “COJA” to which the Chief Economist of the Fund, Gita Gopinath, on Tuesday, when she explained that the world economy will come out of the Covid-19 crisis with the same problems with which he entered
in her.
And, above, with less fiscal margin.
