The Spanish state's investment carried out in Catalonia in 2018 amounted to 10.4% of the total executed over the whole country, a percentage that is the lowest since 2015, when it was 8.4%, and well below the levels that would be proportional to Catalonia's population weighting within Spain (16%) or its part of the whole state's GDP (19%).
These statistics have been released by the Catalan economy ministry and the Spanish treasury. In 2016 and 2017, Catalonia's proportion of the total reached slightly higher percentage figures, 10.5% and 13.2% respectively. In absolute quantities, Spain invested 757 million euros (£670 million; $850 million) in Catalonia last year, compared to the total of 7.24 billion euros actually invested across all of the country's autonomous communities.
Of that 757 million euro investment in Catalonia, 133 million euros went to the General State Administration (71.6% of the 186 million budgeted), Catalan publicly-owned bodies got 40 million euros, and the largest fraction went to state-owned companies, with 583 million euros, but this was only 51.9% of the 1.124 billion budgeted for this area. The overall percentage of the budgeted investment which was actually carried out was 57.7% in Catalonia, compared to an average of 75.5% for all of Spain's autonomous communities.
By far the largest part of the 133 million euros invested by the General State Administration in Catalonia was the €119 million spent by the public works ministry, while around €10 million were invested by the agriculture, fisheries, food and environment ministry. Similarly, most of the €40 million invested by the Spanish state in Catalan publicly-owned companies went to a single area: the Council for Scientific Research, which accounted for €34 million.
Regarding the contributions to state-owned companies, the largest investment items involved rail transport companies: €101 million for the Adif infrastructure company responsible for high speed rail, €106 million for the general Adif rail infrastructure company and €103 million for the rail operator Renfe. State Ports received €69 million and the highway infrastructure company received €89 million.