To govern is to spend. Although the end result, as Zapatero’s experience shows, leads to losing elections in a spectacular fashion, the temptation is irresistible. Zapatero handed out cheques with debt at 60% of GDP. Sánchez is doing it with levels of 140%. May Saint Rita look after his eyesight!
Yesterday, Wednesday, the European Commission gave Spain a two-month ultimatum to reduce the “excessive” delays in payments by autonomous communities and municipalities to their private sector suppliers to avoid the matter ending up in the EU Court of Justice. Spain’s public administrations owed their suppliers over 83.35 billion euros at end-2020, according to data from the Bank of Spain. The debt – which is equivalent to the transfers Spain expects…
Public debt could rise to 120% of GDP in 2020, due to a reclassification of €35 billion of the Sociedad de Gestión de Activos Procedentes de la Reestructuración Bancaria (SAREB), the so-called “bad bank” in Spain, reports Expansión. In fact, Eurostat has forced Spain to digest the 35 billion of debt. With this accounting change, the level of Public Debt over GDP, which increased by more than 20 points over 2020 to 117% (1,311,298 M€) from 95.5% in 2019, would rise by about 3 additional points to 120%.
Link Securities | Spain’s public debt increased in 2020 by 122.4 billion euros, which takes this item at 1.311 billion euros at the end of the fiscal year, according to data from the Bank of Spain. In terms of Gross Domestic Product, Spanish public debt would have finished last year at 117%, a ratio not reached since 1902 due to the consequences of the Cuban War and the global crisis in agricultural prices.
The total debt of the public administrations rose by 8.2% in July in comparison with the same month of the previous year, as a consequence of the greater expenditure derived from the coronavirus crisis. This increase adds up to almost €100 billion more in the last year, according to the data published on Thursday by the Bank of Spain.
Intermoney | There are important reasons for maintaining a prudent attitude with regard to the Spanish economy, situating its full recovery in the year 2023. This would mean that we would lose more than a decade of the fledgling 21st century. On the other hand, there are also reasons to hope the recovery will eventually take shape and not be too far off. These include the encouraging development of the COVID-19 vaccines, the decisive response from the ECB and the EU, and a lesser impact of the crisis than feared on large European partners and customers.
The European Commission (EC) urged the Spanish government to “carefully” evaluate the potential impact of any modifications to the 2012 labour reform and to “preserve “the most positive aspects of it, which “supported solid job creation” during the recovery phase. Citing a recent study from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), it states that “the labour reforms adopted in 2012-13 in response to the crisis have played an important role in promoting a rich recovery in employment which began in 2014.”
BancaMarch | The European Commission warns that Spain is moving away from the adjustment path and asks for measures that compensate the alignment of pensions with prices.
Now “the waters appear to have calmed” in Italy, analysts at Intermoney, however, believe we will see more episodes of tension originating in Italy. The key moment is likely to come at the end of the summer or in the autumn. This situation should be seen as a scenario for tension rather than rupture, although contagion to other peripheral economies could be possible.
For a long time, Spain has had a “debt pending” in terms of budgetary stability. And, for the time being, the current scenario leads us to think that balancing the public finances is a difficult objective to achieve in the medium-term. Added to that problem is the high level of government debt.