MADRID: Spain’s budget minister said on Friday the government would cut spending by two billion euros ($2.3 billion) after it overshot its public deficit target last year. “We missed (our target), and so we are starting ... to implement the corresponding plans,” Cristobal Montoro told reporters after announcing the cuts to Spain’s central budget. But he said the cuts did not ‘affect social spending or spending on items linked to security’. The country’s public deficit stood at five per cent of gross domestic product last year, far higher than the target of 4.2 per cent set by Spain’s conservative government. This made 2015 the eighth consecutive year Spain overshot its fiscal target.