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Palma.—The President Elect of the Balearic Islands, Partido Popular leader José Ramon Bauza, said yesterday that as the present Socialist coalition had “not bothered” to present a budget to the regional Parliament for the coming year, then his new government would introduce urgent legislation to confront the costs it will have to meet prior to the start of the New Year .

The future President was meeting yesterday at party headquarters in Palma with the leader elect of the Council of Majorca, Maria Salom; of the Council of Minorca, Santiago Tadeo; and of Ibiza, Vicent Serra in the first meeting of its kind between the new government institutions.

Although the budget for this year which it will inherit from the present government will now not be approved, the Partido Popular, said Bauzá, will start immediate work on drawing up spending plans for 2012.

The Balearic Islands is the only region of the country where a new budget for 2011 was not voted in by Parliament and which instead rolled over the budget approved in 2010.

In fact, a Balearic Accounting Consultancy body passed an edict in March this year, saying that the outgoing Socialist government had acted unlawfully by not presenting a 2011 budget to Parliament for its debate and vote.

The present government had been unable to approve what spending plans there were in the face of insufficient Parliamentary support.
Immediate needs
Bauzá made reference to the many debts which the Balearic Islands were having to confront.
One such example, he said, was the Balearic Transport Federation which yesterday said that because of the amount of money owed to its members by the government, there was a real possibility of services having to grind to a halt.

Bauza agreed yesterday with the institutional leaders that it would be necessary to have an external audit conducted to find out the true financial state of the region.