Current expenditure of the Basque Autonomous Administrations, formed by the Basque Government, the Provincial Councils and the Municipal Administrations, alongside their corresponding Autonomous Organisations and supramunicipal bodies, registered an 8.7% rise in 2003, according to EUSTAT data, which brought the total to 8,885.9 million euros. Current income, on the other hand, had a more modest 4.5% annual rate of evolution, making its total 10,605.9 million.

Therefore, the balance of current operations (current income minus current expenditure) suffered a 12.8% decline with regard to the previous year, shrinking from 1,972 million in 2002 to 1,720 million in 2003.

As regards tax revenue, which, taken as a whole, accounted for 90.5% of current income, the outstanding annual evolution rates were those corresponding to VAT (10.3%) and Other taxes (6.7%). Income Tax and Special Taxes grew by 3.9% and 3.5% respectively, while income from Corporate Tax rose by 0.6%. Municipal taxes decreased by 3.6% as did Other Current Income, whose contribution reduced by 2.4%.

Under the heading of current expenditure, personnel costs experienced an annual rise of 5.9%, half a point more than the previous year (5.4%). Current transfers, which is to say subsidies and non-recoverable grants, accumulated 10.0% growth. Other current expenditure, operation expenditure, also registered an annual evolution rate of 9.4%; between these two entries (4 and 2) the evolution of total current expenditure came to 8.7%.

Capital income totalled 246.1 million, a 20.6% decrease with regard to the previous year and capital expenditure (investment plus capital transfers) rose to 1,957.5 million (+0.6%). This negative balance of capital operations countered almost the whole positive balance of current operations (1,720 million).

As a consequence of the aforementioned evolution of current and capital operations, the non-financial budgetary surplus fell from 336.5 million in 2002 to 8.4 million in 2003.

Outstanding debt, which was at its lowest in 2001, with 2,776.4 million, came to 3,118.1 million in 2002 and climbed to 3,349.0 million in 2003, although its percentage of GDP remained stable at around 6.8% over the last two years. In 2003, 276 million of previous debt was repaid and 516 million of new debt was contracted.

Personnel employed by the Basque Autonomous Administrations taken as a whole came to 59,378 in 2003, or in other words, 1.1% more than the previous year, when the total figure was 58,718 employees. If we include people employed by Mercantile Enterprises and Private Law Public Bodies, the total number of personnel employed came to 88,482 people, 1.0% more than in 2002. This level of employment accounted for 9.7% of total employment in the A.C. of the Basque Country in 2003.