Spanish GDP exceeded its pre-pandemic level “only” in the second quarter of 2023, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which corrects initial estimates, which indicated that this milestone was achieved in the first quarter. Specifically, from April to June, the Spanish economy exceeded that threshold by 0.4%.
A percentage more than four points below the average of the members of the organization, of 5.1%. Spain, the country most impacted by the Covid crisis, is thus placed in the group of countries where the economic recovery has arrived in a more modest way. However, there are other OECD members that have not even managed to match their economic growth to that of the fourth quarter of 2019. This is the case of the United Kingdom, which is still two tenths below, and the Czech Republic, whose GDP is still 1.1% lower than that recorded by the country prior to the start of the pandemic.
Economic growth in the OECD as a whole slowed down slightly in the second quarter, to 0.4%, one tenth less than in the first quarter. The organization underlines the divergence of situations among member countries. In this sense, growth was higher in the G-7 countries, where GDP grew by 0.5% in the second quarter, one tenth above the previous period. Japan (1.5%), the United States (0.6%) and France (0.5%) lead the list of countries with the highest increases in the group. On the other side of the scale is Italy, which registered a contraction of its economy of 0.3%, while in Germany growth was flat after falling one tenth in the previous three months.
Among the OECD countries, Ireland recorded the largest rise in its GDP (3.3%), followed by Slovenia (1.4%) and Costa Rica (1.3%). On the contrary, the economy fell in 10 countries of the organization, highlighting the setbacks of Poland (-3.7%), Sweden (-1.5%) and Colombia (-1%).
