Spanish president announces plans to cut budget deficit

The Spanish president, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has announced a number of measures designed to reduce Spain’s large Budget deficit. The plan includes reducing the salaries of employees in the public sector by 5% as from 2010, the elimination of the one off payment of 2,500 euros for newborn babies by 2011 and the reduction of 15% in the salaries of members of the government.

These were just some of the measures announced by Rodríguez Zapatero in the Spanish parliament yesterday. The president also announced the suspension of the revaluation of pensions in 2011 excluding non-contributive and minimum pensions as well as the elimination of the transitory conditions for partial retirement.

Zapatero defended these measures saying that they were ‘essential’ and said that they were the ‘fairest possible’ in order to fulfil the commitment to reducing the budget deficit to levels close to 3% by 2013.

He asked for a ‘national effort’ in order to achieve this.