The household savings rate lay below 6% of gross disposable income in 2017, a figure similar to 2007 just before the real estate bubble burst, and well below the peak reached in 2009 of 13.4%. What factors explain the sharp decline that has occurred in the last few years? CaixaBank Research focuses on this issue.
Adjustments to the number of employees and branches in the sector continue, despite the fact that the deleveraging of the private sector seems to be coming to an end. Spanish banks are feeling the effects of the resolution and sale of Banco Popular in June 2017 and posted after-tax losses of €3.92 billion for the year, although it achieved further improvements in solvency and asset quality.
The Treasury will impose a 5% tax on foreign and Spanish companies’ digital services. This new tax will be on the intermediary services and the publicity and sale of digital data up to 5% of the turnover of all companies which offer these services in Spain.
Spain’s three big television channels (TVE, Mediaset España and Atresmedia), have announced the commercial launch of their hybrid television for the end of 2018 or beginning 2019. It’s a service which combines traditional digital TV enhanced with content from the broad band connections in homes.
For a long time, Spain has had a “debt pending” in terms of budgetary stability. And, for the time being, the current scenario leads us to think that balancing the public finances is a difficult objective to achieve in the medium-term. Added to that problem is the high level of government debt.
Spain’s economic growth has only just begun. According to Morgan Stanley’s macroeconomists, the last Spanish cycles have lasted increasingly longer, from ’82 to ’93 and from ’94 to ‘2013.
Spain’s energy market authorities has published an economic-financial analysis of the energy transport activity which Red Eléctrica carried out during the period 2013-2016. In this report, it has recommended a downwards revision to the financial remuneration rate for electricity transport for the next regulatory period beginning 1 January 2020.
The 2018 budgets predict very optimistic increases in revenues (+6% in some taxes). But there is no real risk of non-compliance if spending remains tightly controlled.
Enrique Fanjul (Real Instituto Elcano) | There has been a lot written lately about the role of the foreign sector as the driver of the Spanish economy’s recovery. There have also been some very interesting academic papers published, which provide us with more details of the new configuration of Spanish exports. The exports map is changing, with non-tourism services an increasingly more important segment.
The Public Works Minister, Íñigo de la Serna, said the ministry will launch “before the summer” a record 2.717 billion euros investment programme for AVE high-speed train and roads.