By Carlos Díaz Guell | In 2011, for the first time in recent history, the stock of finance for house purchase recorded a fall. The number of mortgages granted on housing dropped by 33%, that is a quarter of the transactions that were completed in 2006. This correction, which will most probably happen again in 2012, follows the evolution of the real economy. But it also is the result of a process…
They are thriving, actually. National statistics office INE on Friday published January’s data for the hotel sector in Spain and figures were all bright, a repeated event that has lately become a relief spot and an anchor for the economy of the country. Foreign tourist numbers were up by 4.6pc year on year to 2.78 million, average revenue per room rose by 0.1pc to €68.3 million, and occupation was 37.4pc…
MADRID | The Spain’s minister of Economy and Competitiveness Luis de Guindos announced Wednesday that he will explain the euro group the country’s 2011 budgetary slippages “with transparency and and accuracy,” reports new agency EFE. De Guindos also will defend that this year’s Spain’s commitment to fiscal consolidation is ‘absolute’, in spite of the estimated 2011 ‘complex’ deficit drift of 8.5% (from previous 6%) and the EU’s economy negative growth…
By Juan Pedro Marín Arrese, in Madrid | The new elected Cabinet warned in mid-December about a substantial deviation from the planned deficit in last year. Its early forecast pointed to a revised figure of around 8% in terms of GDP, in stark contrast with the 6% target, claimed by the out coming government to have roughly held on line. Final deficit, announced on Monday by the Finance minister, has climbed to…
By Julia Pastor, in Madrid | 60,000 professionals and 1,500 companies from more than 200 countries (86 of the participating firms are Spanish) gather since Monday and for a further week in the Mobile World Congress MWC held in Barcelona. It is the seventh meeting edition hosted by the Spanish city, and the first one since Barcelona was awarded the title of Mobile World Capital last July, an honour that…
His message was clear, no frills: “We are paying the consequences of Germany and France breaking the Fiscal Pact in 2003,” stated Spain’s economy minister Luis de Guindos on Friday at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington. In his first official visit to the US, Mr De Guindos tried to spur US confidence, explaining the key points of financial and labour reforms in Spain. “Europe and Spain’s main problem…
On the blog Nada es Gratis (There’s no such thing as free a lunch), the economics professor Gerard Llobet has published an article about what he believes will represent one of the key aspects in the future of Spain. What will businesses do if, as it is predicted, the construction sector will lose weight in the post-crisis Spain? Companies will hardly be able to compete with other countries with much lower…
“We have a plan to combine fiscal consolidation with structural reforms in order to jumpstart growth in the country and help stabilize the euro area.” This was the core message of the Spanish minister of Economy and Competiveness Luis de Guindos’ speech on Friday at the Brookings Institution, a center-left Washington-based think tank. In his first official trip to the US, De Guindos also held a meeting with the most…
By Julia Pastor, in Madrid | Perhaps the British households in economic troubles because of the crisis and the unemployment impact are mildly familiar with the words eviction or lieu of payment, but more than 150.000 Spanish families have already been evicted and another 330.000 are in the same process. They are destitute families, with all their members unemployed and no additional income, who cannot face up paying their mortgage. On…
By Juan Pedro Marín Arrese, in Madrid | You don’t usually pick up the most suitable moment to undertake a widespread reshuffle of ill-functioning markets. Stiff political and social resistance leads to abandon any plan or hope to do it. As shelving problems don’t settle them, reforms are only accepted under the pressing need to redress a desperate situation. As a result, measures tend to inflict more damage and reap fewer…