93% Of German Companies Believe Spain’s Economic Situation Is Good Or Satisfactory

Caixabank, Telefónica, El Corte Inglés or Iberdrola, the Spanish firms best prepared to confront 2019

More than 93% of German companies believe that the economic situation in Spain is ‘good’ or ‘satisfactory’, 25 points higher than two years ago, as reported by Reuters. This is according to the bi-yearly survey “German Companies in Spain” published this Thursday and prepared by the German Chamber of Commerce for Spain in collaboration with the IESE Business School. Specifically, 65.13% of these companies consider the economic situation in Spain is ‘satisfactory’ and 28.1% consider it’s ‘good’, compared with 6.67% who see the situation as negative. In the survey done in 2016, the percentages of ‘good’, ‘satisfactory’ and ‘bad’ were 7.31%, 60.27% and 32.42% respectively. According to the report, the substantial improvement in the evaluation of the current economic situation in Spain is accompanied by an increase in positive expectations looking ahead to the next two years. So almost 57% of these companies expect the economy to improve in 2018, and slightly more so in 2019.

Depending on their activity, 90.6% of the companies are satisfied with their results in this period, beating the 86% in the previous survey and reaching levels prior to the start of the economic crisis.

Education and regulation, areas which need improvement 

That said, German companies in Spain are very critical of some aspects related to education, regulation in the energy sector and institutional factors, according to their evaluation of competitiveness and development. Specifically, in these aspects there is a significant difference between the importance given to them and the level of satisfaction. The areas with room for improvement are political stability, how the law functions in the rest of the Administration, market unity and energy costs. This is what the managing director of the German Chamber of Commerce Walther von Plettenberg has said, saying that the political situation in Spain “is worrying, particularly in Catalonia,” “evidence which is impossible to deny.” Added to that, the lack of consensus over the Budget, has led the director of the institution to express concern about the investment climate in Spain.

 

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The Corner
The Corner has a team of on-the-ground reporters in capital cities ranging from New York to Beijing. Their stories are edited by the teams at the Spanish magazine Consejeros (for members of companies’ boards of directors) and at the stock market news site Consenso Del Mercado (market consensus). They have worked in economics and communication for over 25 years.