Spain’s economic recovery gathered momentum between July and September, with growth for a fifth consecutive quarter.
The economy grew by 0.5% in the third quarter, according to the country’s statistics office.
This was slightly slower than the 0.6% growth achieved in the previous three months. It took Spain’s annual rate of growth to the highest level in more than six years at 1.6%, up from 1.3% in the second quarter.
Spain was one of the worst hit by the eurozone crisis, suffering a housing market crash which brought its banking system to the brink of collapse. It is now outperforming some of its bigger eurozone peers, including Germany, where the economy contracted by 0.2% in the second quarter, and France, which failed to grow in the first half of the year.
Martin van Vliet, an economist at ING, said: “While the growth comeback in Spain has been impressive, it remains premature in our view to assume that a truly self-sustaining recovery has taken hold. We need further confirmation before we can be sure it really is the comeback kid of Europe.
“The nature of Spain’s economic recovery has clearly changed in recent quarters. For a long time, net exports were the only source of growth, but now that financial conditions have sharply improved and the labour market is turning around, domestic demand is taking over the growth baton.
Nevertheless, bank lending is still contracting and unemployment remains extremely high at 24.4% in August.”
Spain was the first large eurozone country to publish its initial estimate of third quarter growth. Eurostat, the EU’s statistics agency, will publish its initial estimate of eurozone GDP for the same quarter on 14 November.
Separate data from Germany shows that although Europe’s largest economy is in the middle of a slowdown, its jobs market is improving. The number of unemployed fell by 22,000 in October to 2.89 million, beating expectations of a 5,000 increase.
The jobless rate was unchanged at 6.7%. Christian Schulz, a senior economist at Berenberg, said: “Headline data from Germany’s buoyant labour market give little indication that the economic rough patch is having an impact on jobs.
Instead, signs of labour market tightness get stronger.” The European commission’s business and consumer survey of eurozone confidence was also better than expected. The headline economic sentiment index rose to 100.7 in September from 99.9, beating economists’ expectations of a small drop.
theguardian.com
This was slightly slower than the 0.6% growth achieved in the previous three months. It took Spain’s annual rate of growth to the highest level in more than six years at 1.6%, up from 1.3% in the second quarter.
Spain was one of the worst hit by the eurozone crisis, suffering a housing market crash which brought its banking system to the brink of collapse. It is now outperforming some of its bigger eurozone peers, including Germany, where the economy contracted by 0.2% in the second quarter, and France, which failed to grow in the first half of the year.
Martin van Vliet, an economist at ING, said: “While the growth comeback in Spain has been impressive, it remains premature in our view to assume that a truly self-sustaining recovery has taken hold. We need further confirmation before we can be sure it really is the comeback kid of Europe.
“The nature of Spain’s economic recovery has clearly changed in recent quarters. For a long time, net exports were the only source of growth, but now that financial conditions have sharply improved and the labour market is turning around, domestic demand is taking over the growth baton.
Nevertheless, bank lending is still contracting and unemployment remains extremely high at 24.4% in August.”
Spain was the first large eurozone country to publish its initial estimate of third quarter growth. Eurostat, the EU’s statistics agency, will publish its initial estimate of eurozone GDP for the same quarter on 14 November.
Separate data from Germany shows that although Europe’s largest economy is in the middle of a slowdown, its jobs market is improving. The number of unemployed fell by 22,000 in October to 2.89 million, beating expectations of a 5,000 increase.
The jobless rate was unchanged at 6.7%. Christian Schulz, a senior economist at Berenberg, said: “Headline data from Germany’s buoyant labour market give little indication that the economic rough patch is having an impact on jobs.
Instead, signs of labour market tightness get stronger.” The European commission’s business and consumer survey of eurozone confidence was also better than expected. The headline economic sentiment index rose to 100.7 in September from 99.9, beating economists’ expectations of a small drop.
theguardian.com
No comments:
Post a Comment