MADRID | By Fernando G. Urbaneja | The International Monetary Fund forecasts of economic growth may convince rating agencies and market watchers, who might change their negative previsions about Spain into positive ones. For its part, the government should actively work towards one notch improvement of the Spanish rating.
MADRID | By Tania Suárez | Spanish SMEs have an alternative financing channel: the new Alternative Market of Fixed-Income (MARF for its Spanish initials) for SMEs became a reality on Monday. The government is trying to avoid dependence on bank credit.
MADRID | By Tania Suárez | The Spanish Economic and Social Council (ESC) recently received the Government’s draft of the public pension system reform, which is causing lots of controversy since many retirees may lose their only income. In that sense, a group of Spanish economists and jurists have signed a manifesto to explain why the reform is not such a good idea.
MADRID | The Corner Team | Private debt, Spain’s big burden along with unemployment, is decreasing. Credit to families and businesses went down by 3.9% and 9.4% respectively in August, according to the country’s central bank. This means that money is still not flowing to the real economy as much as it should. However, the positive sign is that credit to families is at minimum since 2007. When it comes to asking for a loan, they think it twice.
NEW YORK | By The Corner Team | Spain is leaving the worst of the crisis behind, as economic output and unemployment are stabilising, the IMF said on Monday. However, the adjustment from a profound recession still poses risks for banks. The Washington based institution, which is monitoring Spain’s financial assistance programme, welcomed the implemented measures but urged banks to boost capital without cutting lending.
MADRID | By JP Marin Arrese | The Spanish government is about to reform the pension system so as to improve the budgetary balance. However, the current policies will not yield results in the short or medium-term and they won’t prevent deficits from emerging.
MADRID | By The Corner Team | It seems like the market consensus changed its mind after the Spanish government’s upward GDP revision. What’s going on? Will upward revisions continue? Some experts told us this might happen “in the next few days.”
BARCLAYS ANALYSTS | PM Rajoy announced that the government will raise its 2014 GDP growth forecast to 0.7% from 0.5% previously. The full set of revised 2014 macroeconomic projections is expected to be announced this Friday. The government’s forecast is somewhat below our 2014 growth projection of 0.9%. We expect the economy to emerge from the recession in Q3 13 (+0.1 q/q).
MADRID | By Tania Suárez | Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced a discreet upward revision of the GDP for the Spanish General State Budget. Thus, the government raised their growth forecasts from 0.5% to 0.7%.
MADRID | The Corner Team | Spain’s borrowing costs dropped at a double bond auction on Thursday after the U.S. Fed announced it will not start tapering yet. The 3-year bonds were sold at an average yield of 2.225%, compared with 2.636% seen at the previous auction. Madrid expects that this will leave some margin to offset possible negative deviations elsewhere or to better fulfill the country’s deficit target (6.5% for 2013).