Ineca and CEV Criticise Consell for Low Execution of Announced Investments and "Lack of Transparency"

There is a lack of political will to be transparent and an alarmingly low execution of budgeted investments. This is the double reproach that much of the Alicante business community, represented by the Confederation of Businessmen of the Valencian Community (CEV) and the Institute of Economic Studies of the Province of Alicante (Ineca), launched this Tuesday after presenting a detailed report on the Generalitat Valenciana's general budgets for 2025. A document that is expected to be approved in Les Corts in the coming weeks, following the agreement reached by the PPCV and Vox.

Both Ineca and CEV are outraged by the meagre percentage of compliance with already planned investments. Experience shows, they claim, that around 40% of the economic amounts committed to Alicante remain unexecuted in any project. This is despite being included in the Consell's financing and interest being paid on this owed money, they add. This was verbalised in Alicante by the president of the economic institute, Nacho Amirola, and the president of CEV Alicante, Joaquín Pérez.

They did not do it alone, as the appearance was supported by other members of the business collective, including the president of the CEV, Salvador Navarro, who, however, declined to answer any questions on this occasion when asked by TodoAlicante. Familiar with current affairs, he probably preferred to avoid the risk of raising any issues regarding ties with the president of the Alicante Chamber, Carlos Baño, or with the president of the Generalitat, Carlos Mazón, with whom relations, after the tragic Valencia flood, are not at their best.

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The aim this Tuesday was different, focusing on alerting about the budgetary treatment that the Consell dispenses to Alicante. And this, according to Ineca, does not correspond to the province's population reality, adding that the promised investments only materialise in six out of every ten euros.

It is, according to Amirola, an endemic problem affecting all political leaders, both from the PP and the PSOE. "We are concerned. Budgets are not good or bad in themselves, the key is whether they are fulfilled or not. And we see that in a high percentage, this is not the case," reasons the president of Ineca.

Amirola highlights that territorialised investments, those linked to specific projects, are increasingly declining: "Of those referred to 2025, only 54.9% are known. Practically half of the investment is not known to which projects it will go. It has been worsening. Fifteen years ago, we were always around 75% of the budget in territorialised items, while 25% remained as a remaining fund for what might arise."

During the joint presentation, the president of CEV Alicante stated that "the lack of execution of new investments, already scarce, is an outstanding issue for the Consell." He insists that "it is not coherent with a Community and a province that needs new public investments to be competitive and overcome historical underfunding." And, delving into his reasoning, he hammered home: "Ximo (referring to Ximo Puig) because he was from Morella and Mazón, who is from Alicante... I don't understand it."

Ineca details that in 2024 the figure for non-territorialised investments by the Generalitat amounted to 562.95 million, while in 2025 it reaches 672.26 million, 45.1%. "If in 12 months they have not been able to execute more than 60% of the 2024 budget, in six months it will be practically impossible to do so with the 2025 budget," laments Amirola.

The author of the report on the regional budgets and Director of Studies at Ineca, Francisco Llopis, emphasised that the announced territorialised projects "do not match the population." Alicante, according to Llopis, receives 32.8% of these items, when it should receive 37.5%, meaning that 268.66 million in investments will arrive, 38.4 million less than expected, "after four years of budgets where projects were proposed according to our population weight," he illustrates.

Ineca emphasises that to know the data on regional public investment in the province of Alicante, it had to analyse information from the public works employers' association Seopan, "because the Generalitat Valenciana does not make them public." According to Seopan, in 2024, 109.6 million euros were invested in the province, when it should have received, by population, 240.5 million. "A deficit of 130.9 million euros which, in the accumulated since 2000, means that 785 million euros have not reached the province of Alicante."

Moreover, there are initiatives that are repeated year after year in the regional budgets, without being executed. This is the case, according to Ineca, with at least 12 specific investment projects (educational and health centres) whose construction was supposed to start and finish in 2024, which have not been executed and amount to more than 125 million euros and have reappeared with a lower amount (-13.4%) in the 2025 budgets. The economic institute assumes, moreover, that for 2025 most of the investment that Alicante receives from the Generalitat will be allocated to replacement, that is, to the maintenance of existing infrastructure.