José Luis M. Campuzano (Spanish Banking Association) | This week the Bank of Spain published an interesting analysis of household financial flows and balances at the end of 2018. Families have continued to reduce bank debt to 96% of gross disposable income (gross disposable household income – GDHI) and 59% of GDP.
The Spanish Public Treasury has captured 6 Bn € with a new syndicated 10 year bond, with a demand five times greater, after raising great interest among national and international investors. Spain’s risk premium remains stable around 80 base points.
Joan Tapia | The Bank of Spain, by raising its growth forecast for 2019 from 2.2% to 2.4%, has confirmed that the Spanish economy has begun the year better than expected. Thus are undone the catastrophic forecasts of some analysts and the political right.
Morgan Stanley | The European Commission announced the end of the EDP (excessive déficit procedure) for Spain. This is good news but already expected by the markets. With growing risks in the rest of Europe, our analysts believe that Spain will remain the macro outperformer over the next few quarters thanks to its good fundamentals, with a gradual relative improvement in public finances, reducing debt and the deficit below 3% (the main reason for ening the EDP).
Olga Cantó Sánchez via The Conversation | In many developed countries inequalities in income and economic poverty has increased over the last four decades. Studies of the issue link this progressive increase to the lack of improvements in social policy to correct the growing economic vulnerability of broad sections of the population, which suffer from precarious work linked to temporary and part-time employment and low wages.
Ángel de la Fuente (Fedea) | One of the most controversial aspects of the 2013 reform of the Spanish system of public pensions has been the introduction of a revaluation index (the so-called IRP) which linked the updating of pensions, once triggered, to the financial situation of Social Security, thus abandoning the traditional reference to inflation measured by the consumer price index (CPI). Given the measure´s unpopularity, once inflation recovered after the crisis, it did not take long for it to be provisionally suspended. Currently, there seems to be a broad consensus among the main politically parties to abolish it altogether, returning to the general indexing of pensions to the CPI.
BancaMarch | The amount of mortgages conceded in March rose +23.2% yoy, which implies a slowdown compared to the +31.2% registered in February.
Fernando G. Urbaneja | Spanish electors closed on Sunday an intense electoral cycle, opened 5 years ago, under the impact of the great recession and technological uncertainty, which sketches out a new political map for the fourth country in the European Union.
The figure is -2.4% below the analysts’ previous forecasts. The entity also down slightly -0.2%, its estimates of net profit for 2020.
The Consumer Price Index (CPI) in Spain rose 1% in April compared to the previous month and raised the yoy rate by two tenths to 1.5%, its third consecutive increase since February and its highest level since last November, according to the definitive figures published this Tuesday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), which coincide with those advanced at the end of last month.