Spain will base budget on 5.8 percent deficit target

BRUSSELS: Spain will base its 2012 budget on a deficit target of 5.8 percent of gross domestic product, a softer goal than the official EU-agreed objective of 4.4 percent, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said in Brussels on Friday.

"This year the effort to reduce the structural deficit will be 3.5 (percent) because we have to compensate for what wasn't done last year. The objective for the public deficit during the coming year (2012) will be 5.8 percent," Rajoy said at a news conference.

He said the target was reasonable and that he saw it as being within European Union guidelines which aim at cutting the deficit to 3 percent of GDP by next year.