Unmonitored spending on Andalucian infrastructure

In a tax report on its 2007-2013 Infrastructure Plan, the Accounts Chamber of Andalucia described the lack of control and mismanagement of public spending within the region.

The Accounts Chamber detected 1.550 million euros in public works projects that were approved but not budgeted through the end of 2011. This amount is triple what the region anticipated spending on infrastructure in 2013. The Advisory Council on Public Works has been asked to provide an explanation for why this spending was not factored into the group?s general accounting, which could cause it to not be in compliance with the Budget Stability Law.

Further, given that the projects did were not accounted for on paper, there is no legal motivation to make scheduled payments to the contractors hired to complete them. The payments are supposed to be stretched out in installments from 2012 until 2017. The Advisory Council argues that the funds are not available and that is why public works projects have been frozen or postponed for the past three years. However, this explanation did not convince the region's Accounts Chamber, which knows that a liquidity shortage is a different problem than leaving projects off the annual budget.

Any expenditure that a public administration makes should be properly listed on a section of its budget. If that does not happen, government spending is not official and doesn't have to be reconciled. The debt is tied to the years ahead, and this kind of spending flaunts the Ministry of Finance's oversight of regional spending just like their service provider invoices that they habitually tuck away without paying. The government should put an end to these inexcusable practices.