The Court of Accounts has quantified this Tuesday in Congress at more than 103,690 million euros the expenses assumed between 1989 and 2018 by Social Security in non-contributory items and, therefore, should have been financed by the General State Administration.
This was stated by the president of the supervisory body, Enriqueta Chicano, during her appearance before the Mixed Commission (Congress-Senate) for relations with the Court of Accounts, before which she has presented different reports related to Social Security and its mutual collaborators .
This figure is part of the Court’s audit of the economic-financial, patrimonial and budgetary evolution of the Social Security system, but it is also one of the pending tasks of the Government after the latest reform of the public pension system.
Thus, the reform mandated the Government to commission an audit to quantify what expenses considered inappropriate, due to their assistance and non-contributory nature, had been assuming the system since 1967. Precisely, Unidas Podemos, ERC and EH-Bildu have summoned the minister José Luis Write to entrust this audit to the Court of Accounts, reminding it that it is already late with respect to the legal deadline established by the reform.
Health care and accessories
In his appearance, Chicano has indicated this amount corresponds, on the one hand, to the universalization of health care (31,828 million) and the minimum supplements to raise the lowest pensions (71,862 million), items that, in the opinion of the Court, should have been assumed by the State through current transfers.
The president explained that Social Security financed the universalization of Healthcare with contributions until 1998 but that in the case of minimum supplements this financing was extended for fourteen more years, until 2012. The minimum supplement was fully assumed by the State in 2013, IVIE experts explain to this medium.
This bill for improper expenses could be higher, as Chicano pointed out that there were also expenses that, without being budgetary in nature, influenced the negative evolution of results and net worth, such as the annual amortizations of properties used for sanitary and local services, transferred communities or attached to hospital foundations.
However, it has indicated that it is not possible for the Court to quantify this improper expense due to the age of the data necessary for the calculation.
Return
In his speech, Chicano called attention to take this invoice into account when paying off the loans contracted by Social Security with the General State Administration, the main creditor of the public pension guarantor system.
According to the audit report presented in Congress, Social Security carries a debt as of December 31, 2018 of 79,222 million euros, of which 50,273 million are owed precisely to the General State Administration.
However, the president of the Court emphasizes that “the mechanisms for the cancellation of such loans cannot be raised in isolation”, but rather “they must be dealt with jointly with those aimed at liquidating all the costs that Social Security assumed on behalf of of the General State Administration”.
spending hole
Noting that the recommendations contained in the report had been issued before the latest reform of the public pension system, Chicano did highlight the growing gap between contribution income, which decreased by 1.3% between 2011 and 2018, and the average annual expenditure per pensioner, which increased by 18.7% in that period.
The , points out the Court, raised the negative net worth of the Social Security balance to 37,933 million euros, after presenting accumulated negative financial results between 2010 and 2018 for 115,022 million.
“Debt is a problem, but the deficiency in contributions is no less a problem. It in no way covers the benefits,” Chicano remarked, who sees it necessary to “approximate the benefit to the contribution.” “We will have to do it at some point and take measures in that regard,” he said.
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