“About a year and a half after the start of the pandemic, a solid economic recovery is underway.”
The Vice President of Economic Affairs, Nadia Calviño, has celebrated in this way, at the press conference after the Council of Ministers, the good progress of the economy.
The “strong recovery” that she, in her words, is experiencing Spain.
Calviño, as has subsequently made the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, has been congratulated and advanced that the intertrimestral growth is already at 2%.
And in the update of the macroeconomic picture, it has confirmed growth forecasts: 6.5% by 2021 and 7% by 2022, figures that are undoubtedly very important.
However, what neither Calviño nor Montero have highlighted with the same enthusiasm is that this year and a half that the Spanish economy has needed to return to the path of growth is a very bulky time space comparatively with other powers, and that the collapse
In 2020 it was the highest of the entire OECD.
And, in addition, the 2023 in which the Government considers that Spain will return to the path of lost growth as a result of the pandemic, it is equally one of the latest Europe.
Calviño has also celebrated that the unemployment rate is in the surroundings 15%, and has taken advantage to remind the Bank of Spain and the OECD that its estimates provided figures of up to 25%.
A clear adjustment of accounts that collides with the fact that there are still 340,000 workers in a situation of ERTE.
The Government, in any case, affects the good progress that the labor market registers, a situation that if it is maintained will allow the “employment levels to be close to February 2020”, according to the Vice President.
“Facing the 10 years of activity and 12 employment in the previous crisis, at this time all analysts predict that in 2022 they will recover the level prior to the pandemic, and in 2023 return to the growth path”, it has summarized Calviño.
Montero, on the other hand, has made an equally intense defense of the deficit figures despite the fact that, once again, Spain registered the greatest budget deviation in its history by 2020. From that 11%, the executive wants to reach a rate
of reference – not objective, since the fiscal rules remain in suspense – of 5% in 2022. “It is a 50% reduction,” the person responsible for Finance has underlined.
These figures are directly related to the roof of spending, which is one of the measures that have been approved in the Council of Ministers of this Tuesday and that it is the first step in approval of the General Budgets of the State (PGE) of 2022.
The final data of 196,142 million varies slightly with respect to this year, but enough to be the highest in history and allow the executive to show that fact.
As with the offer of public employment, which with 30,445 seats is “the largest of the historical series”, according to Montero, although if the Moncloa figures are taken, it was observed that in 2018 it was slightly higher.