The Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF) completes its assessment of the Initial Public Administrations Budgets 2024 with the supplementary report on the local sub-sector, which analyses individually and as a group the 24 large local authorities (EELLs) that, because of the size of their budgets, competences, organisational structures and population affected, have a decisive influence on the outcome of the sub-sector.
AIReF estimates for the sub-sector as a whole a surplus of 0.1% of GDP in 2024, one tenth of a percentage point lower than in the previous report, and it sees a risk of non-compliance with the expenditure rule in 10 of them. At group level AIReF estimates that the large local authorities will increase their eligible expenditure by 2.3% in 2024, below the approved rate for the year of 2.6%, albeit with very uneven individual rates.