Caixabank Research | Surprisingly, GDP grew by 2.6% quarter-on-quarter and by 11.9% year-on-year thanks to the strength of private consumption and the recovery in tourism. This result suggests that our current forecast for GDP growth for the year as a whole (4.2%) may prove to be too conservative. However, given the risk of a deterioration due to the impact of the conflict in Ukraine and the cooling of demand from…
The Ministry of Finance and Public Administration reached an agreement with the trade unions on Monday to launch the largest public employment offer in the history of the General State Administration, with 29,578 vacancies. As reported by the Independent Trade Union and Civil Servants (CSIF), the General Union of Workers (UGT) and Comisiones Obreras (CC.OO.), the negotiated offer does not include the State Security Forces and Corps, the Armed Forces…
FEDEA (Fundación de Estudios de Economía Aplicada) analyses existing information on the implementation and execution of investment projects and aid programmes included in the Recovery Plan (RP) and financed by the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Mechanism (RRM). So far, programmes and projects representing about one third of the planned expenditure have been launched, but with significant differences between headings. Of the 24 billion of RRM funds budgeted for 2021, 20…
It is true that there are economies in the eurozone with greater problems than Spain’s and whose prices are much higher, such as the three Baltic republics – Lithuania (13.9%), Estonia (12.4%) and Latvia (8.9%) – as well as Belgium (9.6%) and Slovakia (8.2%). But the rest are on a par… or below. In Germany, year-on-year inflation is already at 7.3% after rising 2.2 points from February. It is the…
Alicia García Herrero (Natixis) | Even with more than two years after the first outbreak of COVID-19, China, as well as the rest of the world, still faces the impact of the pandemic. While the economy has surged from the bottom since the middle of 2021 after China’s successful containment of the domestic spread of the virus, the recovery’s momentum has slowed down quite rapidly, especially since the second quarter…
Fernando González Urbaneja | Inflation is reaching unimagined and growing levels. From a cyclical episode last summer, it has become structural, with fuels (oil and gas) as uncontrollable accelerators. On the one hand, there is the direct effect of increases in electricity (affected by gas) and natural gas prices, and also of fuels (petrol and diesel) linked to the price of a barrel of oil. The direct impact of these…
Marco Troiano (Scope Ratings) | At the end of September 2021, the combined exposure of BIS reporting banks to Ukrainian residents stood at USD 13.5bn gross of risk transfers, with French and Austrian banks accounting for about half of the total. This does not pose any credit concerns. Only a handful of European banking groups maintain a meaningful local presence, including Raiffeisen’s Bank Aval, BNP Paribas’ Ukrsibbank, and PKO’s Kredobank. While…
Capital Group |The term metaverse has become, almost overnight, a buzzword due to Facebook’s name change to Meta to focus on its new mission: bringing the metaverse to life. Before the hype generated by this announcement, most people barely understood the term. But anyone who has experienced virtual reality or augmented reality will have been somewhat familiar with the metaverse.So what is the metaverse and how can we define it?…
Nick Ottens (Atlantic Sentinel) | Spanish employers and trade unions have done a deal with Pedro Sánchez’ socialist government to overturn several labor reforms of his conservative predecessor, Mariano Rajoy. I argued against repeal. Rajoy’s liberalizations helped bring down unemployment, from a peak of 26 percent to 14 percent before the pandemic, and encouraged business growth. They allowed companies to opt out of collective bargaining agreements and expanded trial periods….