Necesidades de gasto en servicios públicos fundamentales

The analysis of the expenditure needs of each Spanish autonomous community is a technical instrument which provides objective grounds for establishing a financing agreement between the levels of government and the regions, which is a political compromise. The debates raised regarding the regional funding model signed in 2009 indicate two serious problems: the resources allocated to cover the needs of the regions are inferior to those agreed (insufficiency or vertical fiscal imbalance) and their distribution is heterogeneous among regions, lacking a criterion of equity (levelling or horizontal balance). The origin of these problems is not the calculation of the adjusted population, although it can be technically improved. The first step to improve the match between resources and needs is to reach a new political agreement that establishes: a) a criterion of overall sufficiency in the base year; (b) a criterion to measure the dynamic of the needs; (c) an equalization of the resources and the financing per unit of need (adjusted population) across regions.