The Spanish regional governments (Comunidades Autonomas) missed 2012 deficit target of 1.5 percent as they experienced an average deficit of 1.73 percent, Finance Minister Cristobal Montoro said on Thursday.

Montoro confirmed the data announced on Wednesday by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, when he said Spain's public deficit had decreased to 6.74 percent, 0.3 percent above the deficit required by the European Union (EU).

The minister praised the effort made by the Spanish administrations while hoping 2013 would be the last year of the economic crisis, as the efforts made are giving results, he said.

He encouraged the administrations to make more efforts in order to reduce the deficit, as "it helps to gain credibility". However, he ruled out the possibility of asking more austerity measures.

The central administration deficit stood at 3.83 and local governments' deficit stood at 0.2 percent, while 11 out of 17 regions in Spain fulfilled the deficit target of 1.5 percent.

Social Security deficit was the main reason of the deviation registered, as it had a deficit of 0.96 percent when it was thought to be balanced. The central administration has a deficit of 4.79 percent if this is added, around 0.3 percent above the deficit target of 4.5 percent.

Deficit data does not take into account financial assistance to the banking system, which has been seriously affected by the crisis needing a bailout from the EU of 37 billion euros (48.4 billion U.S. dollars).

Spain's public deficit would have reached 9.99 percent taking into account the public assistance channeled to the Spanish banking sector

Thursday also saw the National Institute of Statistics (INE) new data about the situation of the Spanish economy in 2012, which experienced a GDP contraction of 0.8 in the last quarter of 2012 while a 1.4 percent fall in 2012.