The Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF) endorses the forecasts accompanying the draft budget of the Valencian Community for 2026. The document sets out growth projections in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employment for the period 2025–2028, which differ from the Spanish Government’s macroeconomic scenario for the country as a whole.
Under the provisions of the Organic Law on the creation of the AIReF, the macroeconomic forecasts included in the draft budgets of all General Government must be accompanied by a report from the institution stating whether they have been endorsed.
For 2026, the Valencian Community estimates GDP growth in volume terms of 2.2%. This forecast is slightly lower than AIReF’s forecast of 2.3% and is in the range of other agencies’ forecasts for the region.
AIReF stresses that macroeconomic forecasts for the Autonomous Regions (ARs) are made in a context of heightened uncertainty and geopolitical risks. In this context, the high level of uncertainty makes it difficult to forecast the macroeconomic outlook and to plan the budgets of the Autonomous Regions, which, in a system as decentralised as Spain’s, may potentially affect compliance with national and European fiscal rules and commitments. In addition, the latest figures from the Spanish Regional Accounts are those for 2024, published in December 2025.
AIReF highlights that the Valencian Community complies with the recommendation to submit, prior to the publication of the draft budget, information on the macroeconomic forecasts that underpin the budget and the corresponding request for endorsement. It also follows the best practice advice on including a comparison with other independent forecasts and on providing information on the econometric techniques, models and parameters used, as well as on the assumptions underlying its projections.
The Valencian Community likewise complies with the best practice advice on including macroeconomic projections beyond the year to which the budget refers—essential for assessing the consistency of the Autonomous Regions’ forecasts with the Government’s Medium-Term Fiscal-Structural Plan (MTP)—and on providing information on the projected path for the GDP deflator.
