The CEO of the Institut Català de Finances (ICF), Jordi Òliva, has thrown cold water this Thursday on the plans of the Catalan government to turn it into a public bank with a bank record.
Before the , has arrived, Òliva has affirmed that the entity waives the possibility of obtaining the bank file, and has added that if the Government wants to establish a Catalan bank, it will not be through this body.
“The ICF, as we want to be, does not need a bank record”, Òliva explained at a press conference this Thursday to take stock of the activity of the first semester, in which he reiterated that he does not need this license as it is a “public promotion bank”, reports Efe.
Òliva explained that the appeal filed after the Bank of Spain dismissed the request to have a license to operate in the retail market is more focused on “understanding the fine print” of the issue, and not because there is a conflict with the regulator state, and recalled that the Bank of Spain maintained that normal banking activity was incompatible with promotional banking activity, according to Europa Press.
In any case, sources from the Ministry of Economy consulted by elEconomista.es have assured that the creation of a public bank continues to be a “strategic objective” of the Government, and that since the refusal of the Bank of Spain to grant a banking license to the ICF in February they are awaiting a response to their appeal and analyzing “other ways” to have a Catalan public bank with commercial activity, although they avoid revealing them.
discrepancies
The divergence between the vision of Òliva -in office since November- and that of the Government is the second between the ICF and the Generalitat in the last year. The first was in July 2021 for the guarantees to cover the guarantees for 5.4 million euros that the Court of Auditors demanded from former Generalitat officials between 2011 and 2017 for alleged embezzlement in the foreign action of the Government in favor of the independence, during the governments of Artur Mas and Carles Puigdemont.
The Court of Accounts initially rejected this system, in October, considering that the Generalitat was acting both as guarantor and presumed injured party, although it finally accepted it this February.
However, by then three independent directors of the ICF had already resigned and , who abstained in the vote to move forward with the guarantee system through the ICF and who lasted only nine months in office. On this issue, Òliva has considered this Thursday that “the forms were not the most appropriate”.
Òliva, like Guardiola, came from CaixaBank, but also had political responsibilities in the Catalan administration between 2011 and 2015, with Mas as president.
In this stage he was general director of Financial Policy, Insurance and Treasury of the Generalitat, for which he assumed the management of the finances and treasury of the Government and financial supervision in the area of competences of the Generalitat, such as the transformation of savings banks Catalan savings accounts in banks and special foundations, and held a position on the ICF governing board.
Now, according to his words collected by Europa Press, he does not seem to share the plans of the regional Executive to have a public bank through the ICF: “If the Government wants to do something, it will not be via the ICF.”
Among other purposes, the Government hoped that the Catalan public bank could form part of the management of the European Next Generation funds in Catalonia and facilitate participation in strategic projects. The request for the bank record was made in the previous legislature, in March 2021, with Pere Aragonès as Minister of Economy and Finance, and Jaume Giró picked up the baton.
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