One of the activities to which the cabinet of Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla (PP) is dedicated is to sell politically the benefits of large economic figures. It is about applying a kind of Andalusia is going well now that the right governs, in the face of waste, corruption and the “fiscal hell” that they maintain existed in the Community before their arrival on the Board.
Moreno’s spokesmen and the president himself disseminate by land, sea and air the idea that Andalusia is a “locomotive” about to take off. This discourse is actually a double-edged sword in a Community with structural unemployment rates several points above the average and with per capita income at the bottom of the country and stagnant at 20 points below the average, as has recently revealed by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
Now the PSOE of Andalusia, which is looking for a way to wake up from the lethargy in which the absolute majority of the PP has plunged Andalusian political lifeand in also shaking off the blow of the loss of the Junta after 37 consecutive years of Government and the shock of the ERE sentence, it has launched to combat official speeches.
He did it last week with the surveys of the Center for Andalusian Studies, which consider that Moreno uses them at will in a way that borders on “illegality” and this Monday he has done the same with the economic propaganda that, they consider, the Government does of the PP.
“They are on the moon, they show only one face and hide the true face of the Andalusian situation“, says the now parliamentarian economist Gaspar Llanes, among other things former director of the Statistics Institute of Andalusia.
Observatory
The Socialists have set up what they call the Economic and Social Observatory of Andalusia – promoted by Llanes – which has the official objective of “studying the social, economic, financial and digital evolution of the community” and with which they intend to combat the triumphalism of the Executive of Moreno.
The analysis made by the Andalusian PSOE of Juan Espadas is that, “although Andalusia benefits economically from the overall boost experienced by the Spanish economy, it is not at the head of the Autonomous Communities that lead the economic ranking, nor employment, nor inflation, nor in social matters”.
“Not much less can it be said that it is the locomotive of Spain, neither economically nor socially, as the president of the Andalusian executive affirms, but that it advances jerkily and at two speeds in the caboose of Spain,” Llanes considers.
With the word locomotive, Llanes refers to an expression that the president has been using. This was done, for example, on January 18 at the Palace of Congresses and Exhibitions in Seville. Moreno then stated that in these four years with the PP on the Board, “stability, serenity and confidence in Andalusia” had been achieved, which would have led to achieving “leaderships that seemed impossible, such as in national tourism or in the number of self-employed workers , as well as in exports”, according to Europa Press. “Andalusia has definitively established itself as the third economic locomotive of Spain, after Madrid and Catalonia”, stressed the president.
Llanes and his team have reached conclusions opposite to that of the Andalusian Government. “The negative differentials with respect to the rest of the Autonomous Communities of Spain are a direct responsibility of the Andalusian executive. And they are a sign of the failure of the developed economic policy. In comparative macroeconomic terms, Andalusia is worse than in 2021 because it loses positions compared to the rest of regions and does not converge, but rather diverges,” they say.
Regarding exports, for example, the PSOE admits that exports of goods are indeed growing, but they add that “Andalusia has ceased to be the second most exporting CCAA as it was in 2018”. then, the Socialists add: “And the trade balance of goods and services registers a deficit of 7% of GDP in the first three quarters of 2022. It is estimated that the trade balance deficit will exceed €11.4 billion in 2022. This means that Andalusia needs an equivalent amount of savings from abroad to finance our economy, most of this financing is provided by the Government of Spain”.
The most relevant macro data, those that are in all the analysis tables, do not favor Moreno either, according to the PSOE, because Andalusia continues to not take off, stagnant, as the INE has already revealed. “GDP is growing, but less than the rest of Spain: 5.5% in Spain, compared to 5.2% in Andalusia in the whole of 2022”. Therefore, affirms Llanes, the Community “does not converge, it diverges”.
