Government advisor: “This number is not correct” – Südekum questions the calculation strategies utilized by economists | EUROtoday

Government advisor Jens Südekum has accused the Advisory Council of Economic Experts of underestimating the federal authorities’s funding spending. The committee estimates the impetus of the funding program to be “far too low,” writes Südekum in an article for “Zeit”.

The economists wrote of their annual report that the federal authorities’s medium-term monetary planning envisages further investments of 63.9 billion euros in comparison with the site visitors gentle planning. However, this may be counteracted by further loans totaling 174.9 billion euros.

The Council concludes from this that solely a small proportion of latest debt flows into investments. Instead, it might be used to plug funds holes. The payments had sparked a lot criticism of the federal government’s funds planning.

Südekum questions the way in which economists calculate issues. “This number is not correct,” he writes. The Advisory Council “apparently forgot” to wash up the site visitors gentle’s deliberate investments to remove the so-called monetary transactions. These are particular loans from the state for the acquisition of investments equivalent to shares. They usually are not affected by the reform of the debt brake and the institution of the particular fund. Therefore, in a comparability, the funding quantities must be adjusted for these loans “in order to actually compare apples with apples and not with pears”.

In an adjusted evaluation, the extra investments are a lot bigger. “By 2028 that will be 120 billion euros, by 2029 even 164 billion euros, i.e. around 100 billion more than the Council of Experts writes,” writes Südekum. “We are talking about a massive increase in investments in this legislative period, the Council of Experts should recognize that and say so openly.”