Andorra needs to enter 1.5 million this month to avoid incurring a budget deficit
The Andorra City Council has to enter more than 1.5 million euros before the end of the year so as not to close the year with a budget deficit, warns the municipal comptroller in a report that was reported in the ordinary November plenary session held this week .
The municipal technician warns that, due to the advanced execution of the budget with a month to go until closing, “it is very probable that said instability will be more pronounced, due to the fact that the works and activity permits have not been liquidated for the installation of the photovoltaic parks that were contemplated in the budget”.
The report, which includes the credit modifications approved so far this year, stresses that the council needs to enter a total of 1,558,333.53 euros to comply with the principle of budgetary stability.
Going down to detail, the auditor warns that the budget for expenses, between chapter 1 and 7, has been increased this year from the initial 12,681,685 euros to 16,610,036.78. That is, almost 4 million euros (3,928,351.78 euros in total).
However, there have been some adjustments in the form of extraordinary income that was not included in the initial budget, such as building and activity permits for the Los Arcos and Sedeis photovoltaic parks, totaling 2,227,531.48 euros. There is also an adjustment of various expenses from other years that must be paid in 2022, which increase to 25,073.04 euros.
With everything, and given that the boards maintain their budgetary stability, “the City Council, by incorporating credit remnants from the previous year, goes from a situation of equilibrium to a situation of financing need of 1,558,333.53 euros”, concludes the technique.
As the income is “insufficient” today “to finance the expenses”, the current situation is one of “budget deficit”, evidenced the official.
The accounts tense the debate
The acting mayor, Joaquín Bielsa, acknowledged the gap between income and expenses, although he hoped that “it will be corrected with the land purchase licenses that we have with the new company,” the JV20 Forest logging company, which has already been awarded land for 2 million euros, or the permits of other renewable parks.
“The budget is to accommodate it” to the needs, justified Bielsa, who defended the credit modifications while respecting the work of the auditor, who “has to be cautious” in her role as supervisor of municipal accounts. Asked by the spokesman for Elijo Andorra, Antonio Donoso, if these revenues will be in the municipal arcades between now and the end of the year, the accidental mayor said that he has “hope” -not certainty- that this is the case, and if not ” at the beginning of the year those incomes will be there”. Otherwise, recognized, it will be necessary to use remnants of the municipal arcades.
The PP spokeswoman, Silvia Quílez, criticized the “constant credit modification” in which the government team lives, which she described as a “lack of foresight and disorganization”, and accused him of plunging the government into “chaos”. institution. “We have a deficit,” Quílez warned. “It is not true that we can solve it between now and the end of the year,” she stated. In addition, “the report itself is telling us that it is possible that it will go further, and the public should know it,” added the popular one.
Pigs where they had broken
On the other hand, the plenary session finished the strategic plan for subsidies 2023-2025, which adds aid for the birth or for the purchase of expensive food that celiac people need. These last subsidies, which were proposed by the PP in a previous plenary session, obtained aid of up to 400 euros per year per person intolerant to gluten to face the extra cost of their food. It is not yet known what this item will have in the 2023 budget.
A series of municipal property plots that until now have been leased to a local farmer will also be declared of public interest, and will have a new destination for the installation of livestock farms. There are two sow farms and another bait farms in the pipeline that together would create 14 jobs, said the PSOE-PAR government team. I choose Andorra, who abstained, asked how many farmers will lose jobs if the farmers who have been working so far are terminated. IU, for its part, requested that this decision be reported to the Local Agrarian Council.