The figures in Spain are stubborn and worrying. Public debt will exceed 100% of GDP in 2016 and the deficit is not keeping pace with commited goals. So Spain’s public finances are a potential source of future instability, which the country cannot permit given that its external debt is close to 170% of GDP.
The utterly preposterous policy platform submitted by Podemos leaves no room for a left-wing grand coalition in Spain. Its reckless recipes are only aimed at frustrating any hope the Socialist leader might have of forming a cabinet. With everyone manoeuvring to achieve pole position, no serious negotiations can take place on alliances which could lead to the formation of a cabinet. So voters will probably have the chance for a second say just before the summer break.
Spain’s property market is consolidating its recovery in the residential segment, while commercial real estate is clearly in an upward trend. But the fact that Sareb still has a substantial amount of property assets to dispose of, some of them with discounts of over 50%, will keep a lid on prices for the time being.
The most obvious falsehood in Spain’s Q4 GDP figure is the data related to Survey of the Active Population. According to Roberto Centeno,”job creation in the private sector slumped to 31,200 people from the 182,000 recorded in the previous quarter, with supposedly similar GDP growth. If we make a comparison with Q4 2014 to eliminate the seasonality effect, 63,100 new private sector jobs were created with GDP growth of 0.7%.”
Regardless of the disappointments, the one-off items, a few little surprises and all kinds of explanations regarding their earnings and provisions, the so-called big banks’ results are what they are. And none of them have anything to celebrate. They remain vulnerable and unable to reach cruising speed.
The outcome of the recent general elections in Spain was such a patchwork that the job of forming a cabinet has become a nightmare. The Socialist leader taking on this awesome task finds himself trapped. Both the middle-of-the-road Ciudadanos party and the extremist Podemos movement flatly refuse any joint agreement to secure enough support in Parliament.
Ofelia Marín-Lozano | Since 2014, Spain’s economy has been recovering and this has been apparent in almost all sectors, but unevenly. One example is the retail sector, with big names like Mercadona, El Corte Inglés, Inditex and Carrefour. All four companies increased their sales in Spain in 2014 (by 2%, 5%, 2.6% and 0.1% respectively).
The Spanish banks’ non-performing loans (NPLs) ratio fell to 10.35% in November (10.56% in October), with total bad loans standing at 138.894 billion euros. But this simple figure encapsulates the eternal problems of statistics. The fact is that the average NPL figure provided by the Bank of Spain does not reflect the significant differences between the banks.
President Rajoy loves to say that Spain is the country with more GDP and employment growth in the EU. And, of course, he is right. When the PP took office in December 2011, unemployment was increasing at a rate of 7.9 per cent a year. Now, four years later, as the PP’s leader has recalled, ‘it’s dropping at an annual rate of 8 per cent.’ But the most common concern for foreign analysts is the low quality of the jobs being created in Spain.
If Spain wants to continue to be one of the leaders in the global economy, it has to persevere with reforms in areas such as the labour market, education, and the university system. For example, in the last 40 years, Spain has had an average jobless rate of 16%, some 10 percentage points higher than that of our main partners.