The Spanish economy has started the year on the right foot and with prospects for improvement. INE data show that in the first quarter of 2023, GDP has increased by 0.6%, robust growth achieved thanks to the very good performance of exports and also investment, which offsets the drop in private consumption, which is the most negative element of these data.
In this way, the National Institute of Statistics (INE) increases the growth of the first quarter by one tenth compared to the advanced data. A growth of exports, with an increase of 5.7%, which is a great leap compared to the negative figures of previous quarters. The push for investment is also positive, with an increase of 1.1%. On the other hand, household consumption fell by 1.3%, thus linking two consecutive periods of decline.
From the Ministry of Economy they affirm that the pre-pandemic level of GDP has recovered and that “growth accelerated in the first quarter of the year, thanks to the contribution of national demand and, above all, of the foreign sector due to the improvement in the competitiveness of Spanish companies”
The tax authority (Airef) also points out that it has managed to reach the level of activity of the pre-pandemic in its evolution of the GDP forecast in real time. According to the last update, establishing the 100 index in the fourth quarter of 2019, on June 21 the GDP would already be at 100.4. However, Spain is one of the last European countries to recover this level of economic activity prior to the pandemic. Punished by the most drastic closure in the first months of the disease and by its dependence on tourism, one of the activities most affected by mobility restrictions, it is one of the economies that has taken the longest to recover those levels.
The INE data support the upward revisions to the growth of the Spanish economy that all the organizations are making. The last was the Bank of Spain, which this Monday increased its forecast to 2.3% this year, two tenths above the government’s calculations, based on this half-point growth in the first quarter and a prediction of an increase 0.6% in the second. It is also true that the Bank of Spain warned of a slowdown in the growth rate in May and early June. I detected it from employment data and confidence indicators.
