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Financial Times praises Spanish Economy Growth despite political turmoil

Labelling it a “model of resistance” as it has continued to improve and grow over the last two years, despite passing through “the worst political crisis in decades” after the general elections held last December.

The paper has highlighted the fact that even though the government has been led by an acting government since the end of last year, and that the chances of resolving the situation are currently in what seems like deadlock, there seems to have been little evidence, at least for the time being, of any collateral negative side effects for the Spanish economy.

And it was noted that according to statistics from the Bank of Spain, the country’s GDP grew 0.7% during the first three months of this year, and 2.9% when compared to the same period from last year.

This means that “Spain is one of the countries within the Euro Zone with the fastest-growing economy once again this year,” commented the British journal, pointing out that our country has exceeded the rate of economic growth of others including Germany, France and Italy.

However, acting minister for the Department of Economy, Luis de Guindos, has said that the rate of economic growth is slowing down, although in the rest of Europe it is actually decelerating even faster. He added that the Spanish economy is in fact growing at a higher rate than forecast by many experts.

De Guindos told the British paper that the main threat to the Spanish economy is actually the slowing down of the global economy, and not the political instability of this country.

Nevertheless, part of the Spanish economy’s success has been attributed to outside factors out of its control, such as the drop in the price of petrol and the boost to Spain’s tourism revenue due to problems in northern African counties including Turkey and Egypt.

And many investors have admitted a slight worry over the future of the country if the political situation in Spain is not resolved in June at the next set of general elections and the current situation continues for the second half of this year.

Other cracks also seem to be appearing, particularly the fact that investment banks are finding it increasingly difficult to make any real profit, property sales are not growing as much as they should despite Spain’s economic recovery, the excruciatingly high unemployment rate, and the fact that Spain needs longer to reduce its deficit.