Germany is a country of travellers. Three out of every four people go on holiday at least once a year. And Spain is their main foreign destination: over 10 million Germans visit the country on an annual basis – spending almost 10 billion euros – running a close second to the number of UK tourists to Spain. Almost half of them travel with a package deal from TUI, world leader in the sector. Sebastian Ebel is the CEO of TUI Germany.
Since the beginning of 2014, the Spanish economy has been recovering from a very tough crisis – unemployment jumped from 8% in 2008 to 26% at the start of 2014 and has now fallen to 18.9%. This is in part thanks to the ECB’s extremely expansionary monetary policy and low interest rates. Now after Donald Trump’s victory, everything could become unstable.
One of the pending adjustments involved in the process of exiting the crisis is related to damaged assets, mainly property. This phenomenon has prevented the Spanish banks from showing off the huge restructuring efforts they have made with better figures.
Spain has been trying to push ahead with two projects which are vitally important for its energy sector: the sale of gas and electricity (basically renewables) to the EU. With practically no positive results to date. In 2012, an agreement was reached with France and Brussels to increase the electricity and gas interconnections with Europe via the Pyrenees. But in spite of that, and the fact the money is already ready there, the investments required are taking much more time to materialise than they should.
The yield differential between the Italian and Spanish 10-year bonds has risen 21 basis points since the start of September and stands at around 34 basis points. We expect a recovery in the differential, which will be gradual and limited to 50-55 bps, up until Italy holds its referendum on constitutional reform.
Trump is not peculiar just to the US. There are Trumps in Austria, France, the UK and in every country. Except, surprise, surprise, in Spain!
It’s been over 280 days since the general elections on December 20th and Spain is still without a government. This has its consequences. On October 15th the country’s caretaker government is due to present its 2017 Budget to Brussels and provide information on the adjustments and other measures which it plans to implement to correct the public deficit. But BS Markets says this draft can only be, at most, an extension of the 2016 Budget, a document without any changes.
I can tell you that the most eminent economists in Spain have continued to be wrong-footed since before the crisis. They are still clamouring for debt reduction, for a return to austerity, when what is slowly killing Europe is precisely that, the austerity spreading from Germany.
The banking sector has more than one reason to complain about the ECB’s latest moves. In addition to the fact that zero interest rates are burying their margins, their lending business is now suffering the damaging effects of the central bank’s corporate sector purchase programme. This new measure has meant that many big companies are substituting bank financing with bond issues.
José Luis M. Campuzano (Spanish Banking Association) | Spanish lenders’ bad loans fell 18.2% to 118.159 billion euros in June from a year earlier, registering their lowest level since 2010, according to the Bank of Spain.