Finance Minister María Jesús Montero rules out a recession for the Spanish economy despite the difficult environment of rising interest rates
The government is beginning to prepare for a possible cut in its macroeconomic forecasts at a time when the world’s major central banks have made it clear that fighting inflation is the target to be beaten, even if it meant the recovery. harm.
Finance Minister María Jesús Montero on Thursday hinted that the Spanish economy will grow by “about 2%” next year. The figure would represent a seven-tenths decrease from the 2.7% in the last macroeconomic table presented in July, which is already an eight-tenths decrease from the previous estimate.
Economy Ministry sources clarify that these words from Montero do not imply any changes with regard to the estimates made by Nadia Calviño in recent times, which mostly refer to the estimates of international companies when applying that “2% environment”. before 2023 .
However, the College has also been expecting growth in 2022 to be “around 4%”, a figure that is slightly lower than the 4.3% set in the macro table.
The various institutions, from the Bank of Spain to the European Commission, through organizations such as the IMF, have long warned of the difficulty of making forecasts, given the uncertainty posed by the evolution of the war in Ukraine and the impact of the withdrawal incentives by central banks.
In this environment, the indicators used to estimate how much and how economies will grow are measured to the millimeter and almost hourly. So it will be necessary to know if the growth forecasts are finally lowered, we will have to wait for the new update of the macro table that will accompany the General State Budget (PGE) that the government is due to present next week.
However, executive sources assure it will be difficult to meet the constitutional deadline, so the proposal to draft the new revenue and expenditure roadmap will be known earlier in October, as has happened in other years where, later , the budgets are approved before the end of the fiscal year, so that they come into effect on January 1 of the following year.
While the government defends that the Spanish economy will continue to grow at a robust pace, the truth is that the new forecasts will have to take into account some events that have occurred since July, such as the increased aggressiveness of central banks or energy risks and supply difficulties Russian natural gas. .
However, Montero ruled out Thursday that the Spanish economy is heading for contraction. “There is no data to allow us to assume that an economic recession will occur,” he said. If GDP grows by 4% this year, the figure would “quadruple the OECD average and be above countries like Italy, Germany or France,” stressed the finance minister.
Source: La Verdad
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