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 | The Corner Team | A typo can come very expensive. One tiny graphical error boosted Spain’s 2014 public debt forecast by 10 billion euros ($13.6 billion), the government admitted on Thursday. After announcing the figure to the world, they took four days to issue a correction.
MADRID | By Francisco López | The situation of the Spanish banking sector is still a recurrent topic in official EU meetings, especially now that we’re a little more than one month of knowing if an extension of the financial assistance program is required. ECB’s Chairman believes that Spanish banks will meet the stress tests in 2014, which seems to remove the possibility of a new aid injection. “Everything seems to suggest that Spain will approach this exercise well-equipped, but of course it is very difficult to guess what will happen with individual banks,” Draghi pointed out.
MADRID | By Carlos Díaz Güell | The European Union troika paid a visit to Spain and concluded that the country’s banking sector “progresses satisfactorily”. Although the final report will not be unveiled until November, first impressions are promising and represent the gateway of the 2014 stress tests.
WASHINGTON | By Pablo Pardo | In 10 months, the T. Rowe Price European Stock has invested 15% of its $944 million (700 million euros) in Spanish assets. Possibly because, as its manager, Dean Penerelli, explained in Barron’s last week’s issue, he knows Spain. Penerelli is not an idealist, neither a gambler. He speaks Spanish, received an MBA at Barcelona’s ESADE, and worked at Spanish bank Banesto (now part of Banco Santander) in the early Nineties. Another important factor may be that, according to Barron’s, Penerelli “likes to buy on the cheap”.
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 | Exports are pumping fresh air into the Spanish economy. The recession-hit country’s trade deficit plunged by a further 53.5 per cent in July, officials said on Friday. The government is banking on foreign trade to be an engine of the recovery.
MADRID | By Tania Suárez | Spanish company Inditex –Zara’s group and the world’s largest clothes retailer- published its first semester fiscal year results on Wednesday. After years of amazing performance, the firm seems to be losing market – it posted a 6% rise in sales to €7.7 billion, compared with a 17% rise in the same period last year.
MADRID | By JP Martin Arrese | For all the trumpeted news on fresh signs of recovery, the Spanish government would be well advised to deliver next year’s budget as close as possible to the one in force. Growth will fail to deliver any significant thrust that might help to recoup the current deficit. Moreover, public debt has rocketed to more than 90% GDP.
MADRID | By Luis Martí | Spaniards are not slim quite yet. Or that’s how the IMF’s last report sees it. While admitting that reforms have gone quite far, the IMF wants wage earners to run an extra mile. But there are a few reasons why the institution’s proposal doesn’t make the cut.