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…
MADRID | Spain reached for the first time a surplus in its trade balance with the euro zone in 2011. Exports to the European Economic and Monetary Union grew 9.6%, almost three points more than imports. The weakness of the domestic demand explains the attainment of such a historic achievement, explained the business daily Cinco Días. Four long years of economic crisis have some positive aspects. According to data released…
By Julia Pastor, in Madrid | Spain’s government is about to attack another of the ills afflicting the country’s economy: the debt that regional governments and municipalities owe to their service providers. The minister of Finance Cristóbal Montoro announced Tuesday that the cabinet will finalise a macro financial operation to cancel this debt, which has reached the €35bn level and has been suffocating Spanish SMEs’ liquidity for years (SMEs’ weight…
By Enrique Quemada Clariana, in Madrid | As we are M&A advisors, last week a German investment fund visited us in Madrid with the intention of giving us a mandate to search for Spanish industrial companies on sale. They think there are great opportunities in Spain. Their belief is that there will be an ‘inverse delocalization’, which means that, given the crisis that has taken place in the last five years and…
By Joan Tàpia | At the end of 2011 and after taking office, Mariano Rajoy’s government made its first decision: a €15 billion budget adjustment which implied that increasing taxes, especially personal income taxes, was essential –something he said he would never do. During the election campaign, the PP also assured that it would not lower the cost of dismissal. Now, the law-decree of February 11 does precisely this and takes…
By Juan Pedro Marín Arrese, in Madrid | Year after year, electricity prices have been reined back below recognised costs, building up a deficit running now at €24 billion. This huge hole turned into a right to be paid back in future has suddenly been put in jeopardy. No wonder power companies are talking about daylight robbery. Are they justified in venting their anger on government? One can understand the…