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The head of the OECD said Thursday it is “totally inaccurate” to compare the debt problems of Spain with Portugal, after Lisbon announced that it needed a European financial bailout.
“Spain will not have the same problems Portugal is facing,” Angel Gurria said in Budapest, where European Union finance ministers are gathering as Lisbon prepares to lodge a formal demand for aid.
Gurria said Madrid had been addressing its problems for some time and that they were “never the same” as those in Lisbon.
“It is totally inaccurate … Portugal, Spain, Italy, the United Kingdom never should have been talked about” in terms of needing a bailout, he stressed.
Talk of debt rescues “should have stopped with Ireland” in December last year, he added.