Andalucia Steve

The Spanish government has announced a new National Reform Plan, which will be sent to Brussels with the goal of seeking a two year extension to the deficit target required by the EU. Here is a brief summary I've gleaned from the Spanish newpapers, El Pais and El Diario and La Verdad.

The changes were announced in a press conference this afternoon and will be described in more detail to congress next week.

The government conceded that it lost 1.3 million jobs since taking office and that it does not expect to see any new ones for the next two years. Job are expected to continue disappearing this year and will only start to recover in 2015.

Changes to pensions were announced included extended the retirement age, increasing the years in which contributions are paid and decoupling the pension rate from inflation.

Vice President, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría described eight of the new measures of reform. Among them, the government will extended for an additional year the rise in income tax, announced further increases in excise tax, an additional rise of societies tax (via elimination of deductions) and a tax on bank deposits.

No new spending was mention, but emphasis was placed on the steps forward that would be taken in the liberalisation of professional services, a more appropriate taxation for entrepreneurs, improving public administration by removing administrative barriers through a thorough reform of all levels of government, funding for SMEs, more energy reforms and the development of markets.

Fortunately since I'm a blogger and not a newspaper reported I can say humbug. Even in Franco's day he provided jobs for people by an extensive programme of dam and road building. To me there seem few crumbs of comfort here for the poor people of Spain to be rejoicing about.