The autonomous communities will need more money than ever to finance themselves next year : about 50,000 million euros, according to the estimates of the Afi consultancy.

This amount includes both the maturities and repayments of the debt that the regions must satisfy in 2021 as well as the largest deficit that they will have to finance due to the pandemic, 1.1% of GDP according to the Government’s forecasts.

The figure also includes the bill incurred during the previous financial crisis, a burden that continues to weigh on the autonomies after more than a decade.

Spend, spend and spend. The slogan was clear: in the midst of an unprecedented crisis, with restrictions on activity and in view of the need to strengthen health systems and public benefits, we must not skimp on outlays.

This maxim has permeated the policies of all the major economies of the world, which have mobilized millionaire resources to prevent the virus from causing structural damage to the productive fabric.

Spain has also jumped on the expansive bandwagon and, for now, the countercyclical measures are plugging the bleeding. But the scar that the pandemic will leave on public accounts will be deep and will take time to heal, since it will not be easy or fast to get rid of the mountain of debt and deficit that the Public Administrations have accumulated to face the biggest blow since the Civil War. .

The recently approved Budgets foresee net Treasury emissions of 110,000 million in 2021. This figure, which is always calculated with caution based on estimates of new expenses, income or needs of the communities, will also take into account next year arrival of European aid and will be added to the huge amount of liabilities already put into circulation this year.

According to the Government, the debt-to-GDP ratio will go from 95.5% in 2019 to 118.8% in 2020, the highest in a century. Even so, the forecast is that the average cost of debt will continue to fall next year thanks to ultra-low rates, which will prevent it from becoming, for the moment, an unsustainable burden.

The communities, in the front line to contain the health emergency, will need more than 50,000 million to finance themselves in 2021, according to provisional calculations by International Financial Analysts (Afi).

Some 36,600 million correspond to maturities and amortizations, a figure similar to that of 2020, 14,000 million to cover the largest deficit and about 900 million to the negative settlements of 2008 and 2009 that the regions dragged from the previous financial crisis.

Catalonia, the Valencian Community and Andalusia will be, for yet another year, the regions that will require the most resources in 2021; Navarra, Cantabria and La Rioja the least. “It is a historical record of gross debt, but the deficit component is uncertain and will depend on the economic evolution,” says César Cantalapiedra, partner of the consulting firm.

The Government, in line with the decision of Brussels to freeze the Stability and Growth Pact in the face of the virulence of the crisis, has suspended the fiscal rules for 2020 and 2021. Instead of approving a mandatory path – which marks the maximum limit of imbalance -, has set non-binding reference rates.

In the case of the communities, this is 2.2% of GDP by 2021, although the Treasury has promised to assume half of the gap through an extraordinary transfer of 13,486 million.

This year, communities have enjoyed an unprecedented flow of money to ensure critical services without cash strain. In fact, the Treasury kept the amount of installments on account – which advances to the regions based on expected income – calculated before the outbreak of the pandemic, 115,662 million.

To this figure must be added other extraordinary transfers, such as the covid-19 fund of 16,000 million that will not have to be reimbursed to the State. In 2021, regional financing will provide slightly less resources (113,729 million), but the difference will be more than compensated with the aforementioned provision to cover part of the deficit and other funds from European aid.

The adjustment will come in 2022, when the accounts will have to be balanced. The current financing model foresees that every two years it is reviewed if the communities received more or less resources than they owed, depending on whether the income has been higher or lower than the forecasts.

If these have fallen short, the regions have a positive settlement; on the contrary, if the performance has been worse than expected, they return the excess received to the State.

The fact that the Government kept the tap open in 2020 – the resources were calculated based on a rise in GDP of 1.6%, when the fall now forecast by the Executive is 11.2% – will imply that in 2022 the communities return to the State what they have received too much.

Airef has already put numbers to this reimbursement: about 5,000 million. The question is how that money will be refunded. In the case of the Great Recession, the repayment was stretched over time, and therefore in 2021 the regions continue to pay the negative settlements of 2008 and 2009.

Xi Jinping is not used to giving instructions in vain. In September of last year, the Chinese leader stressed the importance of making “efforts to unite the private sector around the Party”, with the aim of “promoting its healthy development.”

These words began an antitrust campaign in the digital sector aimed at limiting both structural risks and the power of its actors. The big hit has been Alibaba , the first technology company in the country and the ninth company in the world by market capitalization.

The first blow came in mid-November, when the authorities halted the Ant Group IPO , destined to be the largest in history, with just 48 hours notice. The financial services firm was already poised to rake in $ 34.5 billion (€ 29.5 billion) through a simultaneous debut in the Hong Kong and Shanghai parks , an amount that would dwarf Saudi Aramco’s $ 29 billion peak. in December 2019 .

Ant is one of the most innovative organizations in the world , to the point of having no equivalent outside of China. Its primary service is Alipay, an electronic payment platform with a huge social implantation. This represents the gateway to a colossal ecosystem fed by the huge amount of data generated by each transaction.

Ant can thus offer personalized loans, investments or insurance. The firm is proud to use a scheme named 310 : when contracting any financial product, 3 minutes are enough to fill out a form, which is approved in 1 second by the intervention of 0 human beings. Alibaba still owns a third of the company that was once its subsidiary.

The mathematics of its IPO would have put Ant in a position to outperform the first state banks. With the ambition and the capacity, in addition, to control a significant percentage of the national credit; thanks to the ubiquity of its telephone application in the 1,560 million mobile phones in the country and the simplicity of its services.

The Government understood that this possibility posed an intolerable risk, and at the last minute interrupted its dairy accounts, modifying the legal requirements.

Since then the corrections have been constant. The latest took place this week, when the People’s Bank of China provided a new public slap on the wrist in the form of a statement .

After a meeting with Ant managers, the central bank assured in its text that it must “return to its origins” as an electronic payments company and “rectify errors” made “in key business areas”, even demanding “an implementation schedule ”.

Ant, with his head down, has already taken steps to demonstrate his compliance, such as limiting the credit available to his users. Eric Jing, its CEO, has assured that he “listens carefully” to criticism from “regulators and customers.”

The mother house has not been unscathed either. Last week the State Administration for Market Regulation announced the opening of an investigation against Alibaba, accused of monopolistic practices.

Provincial authorities in Zhejiang, where the tech giant is based, have already searched its headquarters, questioned employees and requisitioned documents. As a result of its collision with the Party, Alibaba has lost almost a quarter of its share price since the end of October, equivalent to the evaporation of 260 billion dollars (213 billion euros).

Government harassment also has an ad hominem dimension . What happened shows the fall from grace of Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba and one of the best-known faces in the country. “If the Government needs Alipay, I will give it to them,” he said solicitously in 2013.

Just before Ant’s failed IPO – of which he is the majority shareholder – he unchecked himself with controversial statements criticizing the legislation. financially and their “pawn shop” mentality. Whoever was the richest man in China has seen how in recent months his wealth has decreased from 51,000 million euros to 40,000, according to data from Bloomberg.

The future is not rosy for the businessman and philanthropist: the authorities have instructed him not to leave the country, according to different media.

Despite the fact that the Chinese model remains nominally communist, private companies have been the engine of its economy for many years. These have gone from adding 443,000 in 1996 to 15.6 million in 2018, to constitute 84% of the total.

One of the items on Xi’s domestic agenda is to increase the Party’s control over them and align them with state priorities. The first step was the issuance in mid-September by the Central Committee of the General Office of the Chinese Communist Party of a document entitled “Opinion on Strengthening the Work of the United Front of Private Economy in the New Era.”

Its purpose was “to enhance the focus of wisdom and strength of entrepreneurs in the goal and mission of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” To do this, he aspired to create “a column of reliable and available businessman at key moments.”

The government targeted the digital sector in this way. Not only because it is a strategic area, but also because it is one of the industries whose actors have accumulated greater social preponderance thanks to lax regulation. But that is over.

In November, the competent authorities published the initial draft of new antitrust guidelines on the Internet. Two weeks later, the Central Economic Work Conference, the annual meeting of this body, in charge of setting the course in financial and banking matters, concluded.

The resulting document contained an epigraph in which the institution agreed to strengthen control over financial services and electronic commerce companies, with the intention of “strengthening antitrust and preventing a disorderly expansion of capital.”

This resulted in two rounds of fines. The first in mid-December against Alibaba itself, China Literatura – of which Tencent is the majority shareholder – and Hive Box for “not reporting on past agreements for the evaluation of the authorities.”

The second this week, due to “irregular pricing.” The victims on this occasion were JD – the second e-commerce company in the country -, Tmall – owned, again, by Alibaba – and Vishop.

All the sanctions were set at 500,000 yuan (62,700 euros), a modest amount despite exceeding the maximum established by the 2008 Antitrust Law. This step, however, marks the first time that institutions have acted against Internet companies, anticipating a growing trend that goes to show that in China nothing is above the Party. And this, in turn, is increasingly indistinguishable from Xi Jinping’s word.

It could be said that it has been one of the many planetary failures of 2020. For two decades, the members of the World Trade Organization (WTO) have been negotiating the elimination of subsidies that promote overfishing and illegal fishing without having managed to To close a deal.

The deadline was met on December 31 and the 164 countries sitting at the table have given each other an extension in 2021 that, to the despair of the Colombian ambassador Santiago Willis,Chairman of the negotiating group, it will not be free.

“The new rules for fisheries subsidies are a kind of debt to the world community that we were supposed to pay before the end of the year. The fact that we are not paying it on time does not mean that it has disappeared.

On the contrary, the debt increases with each passing day and the urgency is increasing. As we speak, fish populations continue to decline ”, he lamented after the pact was shelved.

According to the 2020 FAO report on the state of world fisheries, the fraction of fish stocks that are within biologically sustainable levels has fallen from 90% in 1974 to 65.8% in 2017. In contrast, it has been increased percentage of exploited stocksat biologically unsustainable levels, which is now a worrying 34.2% of the total.

That same work indicates that of the 10 most caught species on the planet (anchovy, Alaskan pollock, Atlantic herring, Atlantic cod, Pacific starling, Chilean horse mackerel, Japanese sardine, skipjack, South American sardine and capelin), a third are overexploited.

At the same time, fishing countries spend $ 19 billion annually on expanding and modernizing fleets without taking into account the levels of maximum sustainable yield from fisheries (the maximum amount that can be fished without weakening fish stocks).

From Geneva and by videoconference, Willis regrets that “the perfect storm” has occurred, for failure: the pandemic has limited contacts, the WTO is going through delicate moments (still without a director after the resignation in summer of Roberto Azevedo, and thanks to the Trump’s blockade of consensus candidate Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala), and there is a lot of pressure from countries to keep fisheries subsidies that end up in the wrong hands.

“You have to keep pushing hard because on some issues the positions are still far away,” he believes.

The discussions have been very difficult. The analysis by David Voces, CEO of Europêche, the European association that groups together fishing companies, begins with the content: “What is illegal fishing?

There is no definition as such, but we have criteria from the FAO and in the EU we have the toughest and most effective law on the matter, with capacity limits that are measured in the space of the ship and the power of the engine.

However, we see that there are other countries that do not have standards, nor capacity limits, not even an adequate fleet registry ”. As an example, he points to a recent study that says China’s long-haul fleet, the world’s most powerful, is five to eight times larger than previously documented.

“What kind of actions contribute to overcapacity?” Voces continues: “We are talking about construction, renovation, modernization of the fleet … there are several lines that can be taken into account. In the EU, the new European Fisheries Fund has just been approved and it is guaranteed at all times that there is no increase in capacity.

And even if there is an increase in space on the ship, it must have been previously compensated with the suppression of the same unit of space on the other hand. This does not happen neither in China nor in Russia, which is giving 30% subsidies to new construction of ships of more than 100 meters in length, with very large capacity ”, he denounces.

China, which defines itself as a developing country in this matter, is fighting in the WTO for exceptions to its fleet to be recognized, as is the case with India. Something that forces you to juggle.

“Differential treatment has to generate a very important balance between least developed countries and the rest, but without violating the principle of the agreement, which is to eliminate unsustainable subsidies”, Willis frames. Javier Garat, secretary of the Spanish employers’ association Cepesca, analyzes it in the same way

“There is 30% of stocksoverexploited and without any doubt it is necessary to put measures. This usually happens in fisheries in developing countries and clearly we must try to help those countries to take the appropriate measures ”.

But doing so cannot jeopardize the ultimate goal of the WTO: to prevent countries from depleting the oceans causing irreparable damage, as is happening now.

Ignacio Fresco, a marine policy consultant and sustainability expert, believes that the countries that grant the most subsidies are those that have to make the most efforts, such as India, China, Korea and also the European Union.

And he contradicts the employers by pointing out that the new European Maritime Fund “indirectly reintroduces subsidies to construction. The initial position of the EU in this negotiation defended by Cecilia Malmström was very ambitious, but the reintroduction of subsidies weakened its position because it lost credibility.

The EU has requested that subsidies can continue to be given if there are fisheries management plans. But the objective of the agreement is not to promote fisheries management, but to eliminate a tool that encourages overfishing ”, he criticizes.