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Spanish Economy Causing Less Concern Than a Year Ago, Says Finance Minister
Spanish Finance Minister Luis de Guindos said Saturday that the Iberian nation’s economic situation is less worrisome to the IMF and G20 than it was a year ago.
“I’m returning (to Spain) with a much better feeling than I had a year ago,” De Guindos said here in a press conference, alluding to concerns last year that sky-high borrowing costs would force Spain to apply for a full sovereign bailout.
“Spain is much less the focus of attention of the global economy” compared to a year ago, the minister said. The International Monetary Fund has projected the Iberian nation will contract by 1.6 percent this year before growing by 0.7 percent in 2014.
The finance minister participated Friday and Saturday in Washington in the semi-annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank as well as a gathering of the G20, which comprises finance ministers and central bank governors from 20 major economies, including the European Union.
De Guindos said he confirmed during the meetings in Washington that “there’s certain concern about growth in Europe,” where a recovery has not yet materialized.
The IMF this week warned about an unbalanced and insufficient global recovery that is being led by emerging markets with Europe bringing up the rear.
“It’s not so much the specific situation of Spain as the situation in the whole of Europe,” De Guindos said in summing up the mood in Washington.
In that regard, he said that in addition to providing financial stability to the world, Europe “also must provide economic growth.”
“That’s something that other economic regions have requested of us and that’s where we need to keep moving forward with the whole issue of the banking union, the fiscal union,” De Guindos added.
The finance minister said the “doubts” surrounding the financial stability of the euro zone as a whole have “disappeared” but concerns about the region’s economic weakness persist.
Last summer, Spain was forced to request a loan of up to 100 billion euros ($129.7 billion) from its euro zone partners to prop up its ailing financial institutions.
The Spanish economy, currently in recession, remains hampered by the fallout from the collapse of a long-building housing bubble, which left many of its banks saddled with toxic assets.
Published in Latino Daily News
2013-04-21 10:30:06
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