Fatigue seen in primary surplus in Jan-Feb.

The excessive containment of state expenditure and the central bank dividend led to the budget posting a primary surplus of 2.1 billion euros on top of the target of 846 million euros in the January-February period, although this was below the figure seen in the same period last year (2.85 billion euros), according to data released om Tuesday by the State General Accounting Office.

The state is depriving the real economy of vital liquidity by not paying public entities, the main reason being that many hospitals have not yet submitted their budgets to the State General Accounting Office. The other main factor is the new automatic fiscal monitoring mechanism, which delays the disbursement of budget credit until expenditure has been fully probed. This results in an increase in expired debts to the private sector. In January payments were kept down to a minimum even though the...