Crédito y Caución (Atradius) | After an uncertain start into 2022 due to a new wave of the pandemic, emerging market economies (EMEs) face new headwinds triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Growth in EMEs as a whole is forecast to decline from 6.9% in 2021 to 3.7% in 2022. The events in Ukraine come on top of other issues, such as supply chain bottlenecks renewed Covid infections in some…
Juan Girón Roger (journalist) | You might have thought why you can leave your house, take a taxi, jump into a plane, get a bus, take a train and get to your destination. That is because of multimodal travel. This vision was developed to make people’s life easier. But is this something anybody can use and benefit from? Let’s take it one step at a time. Multimodal travel implies that…
According to the III Labor Market Yearbook published Friday by the Adecco Group Institute, Spain added in 2021 its thirteenth consecutive year as the country with the highest number of unemployed in the European Union (EU). Thus, despite the fact that in 2021 all the employment lost in the pandemic was recovered, with a generalized fall in unemployment, Spain, which accounts for 9.2% of the population of the EU-27, had…
Juan Antonio Martínez & Leonardo Gago (ASE Group) | More liquefied natural gas (LNG) is arriving at European ports and has lowered the daily price and that of immediate short-term gas products at the Dutch TTF. For the time being, the increase in LNG imports is offsetting the strain on Russian supply. In Q1 2022, Russian exports to the EU had fallen by 35% compared to the 2016-2021 average for…
Fuel prices give no respite. The 20 cents per litre rebate that has been in force since 1 April has partially relieved the pockets of millions of Spanish drivers. But diesel and petrol prices continue to rise at Spanish service stations. Diesel, in fact, has broken a new record this week, reaching 1.872 euros per litre on average, surpassing the price of petrol for the fifth consecutive week. This is…
Norges Bank, the Norwegian bank in charge of managing the country’s sovereign wealth fund, has revealed a 3.006% stake in Banco Santander, a percentage it controls directly. This is according to the notification it sent Thursday to the National Securities Market Commission (CNMV). Norges Bank’s stake in Santander consists of direct control of 513.4 million shares which, at Thursday’s closing price of EUR 2.69 per share, implies a total value…
Spain was the country that suffered the biggest monthly fall in retail sales in March, with a decline of 4%. In the euro area as a whole, the contraction was 0.4% compared with the previous month, when it had risen by 0.4 percentage points. Meanwhile, in the EU as a whole it fell by 0.2%, after having risen by 0.3% in February. The data published today by Eurostat also shows…
Seat wants to turn Spain into a platform for the electric car in Europe. This plan includes the electrification of its Martorell and Pamplona factories, a battery production ecosystem – ranging from lithium mining, a key material, to a giant battery factory in Sagunt -, locations for electric components and a training, digitalisation and circular economy plan. This is explained in the “Future: Fast Forward” project, which brings together an…
April leaves 184,577 more contributors to the Social Security system in Spain and 86,260 fewer unemployed. This usually corresponds to a traditionally positive month for employment when it coincides with the Easter holiday period, with its good impact on jobs. The average number of affiliated members in April exceeded 20 million (20,019,080 people) and the number of unemployed fell to three million (3,022,503 unemployed). That said, we continue to lead…
A dozen parties that normally vote for the coalition government’s projects, amongst them the partners of Unidas Podemos, last week registered a request for a commission of enquiry into the Pegasus case. They believe that the fact that the PM himself, Pedro Sánchez, and the Minister of Defence, Margarita Robles, have been spied on aggravates the case, and demand accountability. UN Podemos, ERC, EH Bildu, Junts, PdeCAT, the CUP, Más…