Spain sees 2016 growth verging on 3%

Spain will post growth of 2.9 percent for 2016, Finance Minister Luis de Guindos said Sunday, revising an earlier forecast of 2.7 percent as the country’s recovery gathers momentum.

“Our observations indicate stronger growth for 2016, close on 3.0 percent, coming in at 2.9 percent,” De Guindos said on the sidelines of a meeting of G20 finance ministers and central bank governors in Chengdu, China.

De Guindos told Spanish RNE radio he saw a relative slowdown in 2017 “perfectly in line” with eurozone and global trend forecasts and expressed confidence Madrid would avoid a European Commission fine for overshooting spending targets.

Earlier this month, the EU threatened Spain and Portugal with huge fines for failing to fix years of high deficits.

Madrid and Lisbon are appealing for leniency from penalties of up to 0.2 percent of their economic output.

“It is good sense (to think) there will be no fine for Spain,” De Guindos said, pointing to the fact that Spanish growth is currently outpacing the eurozone average.

Spain’s government forecasts 2017 growth of 2.4 percent as the country emerges further from a 2008 property crash which sent the economy into a tailspin before 2014 saw the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy post its first full-year of growth in six years.

The country was particularly hard-hit by the global economic crisis and unemployment rocketed to a high of 27 percent in early 2013.

But last year it posted growth of 3.2 percent — outpacing most of its EU neighbours.