12/09/2012 00:00
TW
0

Palma.—Socialist spokeswoman Francina Armengol said yesterday that the Balearics will receive a financial bailout for the government just like the rest of Spain, but that the public deficit of gross regional product for the first half of the year will reach 3% rather than the 1.5% which Central Government demanded from the regions for 2012.

Armengol said at a press conference that if the President of the Balearic government, Jose Ramón Bauza has hidden the true deficit figure, “then it is for something”. She said that in the meeting of the Balearic Parliament today, she is going to ask for “clarification” from the Minister for the Economy Josep Ignaci Aguilo. Armengol said that she will ask for the details of the deficit and the budget for 2013.

Armengol warned that to use emergency economic funding for the regions would mean that the Balearics would lose control over its own regional decision making, and that there would have to be further cutbacks in health and education. These two areas alone would account for 70 percent of the budget.

The Socialist spokesman also said that “it is very bad economic news” and that it will affect pensions. She pointed out that the Balearics is already one of the regions where average pensions are the lowest in Spain. Armengol said that if the Balearic President Jose Ramón Bauza practiced being a regional leader instead of a representative for Central Government, then the situation would improve because Madrid would pay the Balearics what it owes. Referring to Bauza's claims that the economic situation in the Balearics was improving, Armengol said that the President was being totally unrealistic because the lives of ordinary people were becoming “miserable.”