On December 5th, the Council of Ministers endorsed the Action Plan drawn up by the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (AIReF) for the first phase of the new Spending Review 2022-2026, formalised in December 2021. The new cycle, which is based on the commitment made by the Government in the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan (RTRP), gives continuity to the first Spending Review carried out by AIReF in three phases between 2018 and 2022.
In the first phase of this second commission, AIReF will analyse the financial instruments to support the productive sectors and expenditure on the healthcare of the Social Security system for civil servants. The Action Plan sets out the methodological details of the analysis, as well as the planned timetable and budget. AIReF has undertaken to carry out the analysis within one year of incorporating the required resources.
In the third phase of the first Spending Review, AIReF undertook the evaluation of the general overview of financial instruments and the effectiveness and efficiency of those relating to the internationalisation of the economy. In this first stage of the new Spending Review, AIReF will begin to review the financial instruments that have been strengthened as a result of COVID-19, in particular those aimed at business growth and the promotion of innovative entrepreneurship and the digitalisation of the production structure. The aim of this evaluation is to analyse the effectiveness of these instruments in order to improve them and make them more useful in supporting SMEs and in achieving their aims of boosting digitalisation, innovation, entrepreneurship and business growth.
The public expenditure analysis project known as the Spending Review has its origins in the commission made by the Government in the 2017-2020 Stability Programme Update. The Spending Review 2017-2020 was implemented in three phases. The results of the first two phases have already been published. The third phase is under development and will end in June 2023, in accordance with the Action Plan approved by the Council of Ministers in December 2021. Since August 2021, AIReF has had a Public Spending Evaluation Division responsible for carrying out these projects and other studies commissioned by the different General Government sub-sectors.