“The electoral promises of PP and Vox will mortgage Orihuela for the next 15 years,” said Carolina Gracia, spokesperson for the PSOE, when evaluating the government team’s budget project. She went on to recommend 26 amendments. Ciudadanos, meanwhile, wants the whole budget rewritten.
Gracia went on to say, “This Government has put its own political interests before those of Orihuela, and this decision will put the City Council in debt with a loan of 41 million euros”, despite the fact that “a few weeks ago we asked Vegara not to put his political comfort before a real budget”.
For the 2024 financial year, the budget, the first for more than five years, recommends a total amount of 140.5 million euros in income and expenditure, compared to 80.3 million when it was last approved in 2018, representing an increase of 60.1 million and a percentage increase of 74.8%. This includes investments of 40.9 million, which will be financed through bank loans .
Gracia said that these budgets have only one positive item: the current spending status is updated in order to comply with both current contracts and to tender those that have expired or are soon to be expired.
However, the remaining proposals show that the government is willing to do anything to maintain “the supposed economic unlocking of the city, and to do that they are going to mortgage the City for 15 years with loans.”
According to PSOE calculations, “after the first year, repayments will be more than 300,000 euros per month, that is 3.8 million per year, or 57 million euros over the term of the loan”.
While the interest repayment figure may be disputed, with much of the planned investment unlikely to yield a return, it appears as though the council is simply buying vanity votes, and of course what coastal residents must also realise is that, despite financing the bulk of the proposed loan, the residents of the Orihuela Costa are, at the very most, only receiving 30% of the benefit.
Ciudadanos has also presented an amendment to the entire budget that it considers to be “a joke.” In the words of its spokesperson, José Aix, it is ” a great scam for the people of Oriola for the simple reason that it is unattainable.”
