The president of the Independent Tax Authority (knows as the Airef in Spanish), José Luis Escrivá, poured salt in Spain's biggest economic wound -- debt -- during a presentation in front of the media. He said that before getting all worked up about a tenth of a point in the GDP/deficit ratio, we should focus on paying down the national debt.
The government has not made any plans to do this in the near term, because it expects the national debt to be 100% of GDP in 2017. The Airef has been slow to start, and as a result its Stability Plan will not go into effect soon. We'll have to wait and see whether Escrivá continues to think and act independently even though he keeps close ties with the Finance Ministry. In the end, he has a hard task ahead of him.
