Europe News Desk!! Spain’s gross domestic product (GDP) is set to grow by 5.5 per cent in 2022, higher than the government’s earlier forecast of 4.4 per cent. This information was received from official figures. Data published on Friday by the Spanish statistics office (INE) also showed that the figure put to shame even more optimistic forecasts, such as those from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Xinhua news agency reported. 4.7 percent expected for 2022 by the World Bank and 5.2 percent by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The growth rate for 2022 was the same as for 2021, indicating that Spain has left behind years of economic hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The growth was partly due to a 3.1 percent increase in internal demand, with a 2.4 percent increase in external demand.
Last year also saw a 0.7 per cent decline in public spending – the first such year since 2014. On the positive side, however, the 4.6 per cent increase in investment last year was the biggest recorded since 2018. Spain’s Economy Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Nadia Calvino interpreted the results as evidence of the dynamism and strength of the economy, which continued to perform well in February 2022 in a difficult international context marked by the start of the Russia-Ukraine war. On the downside, GDP growth slowed to 0.2 per cent in the final quarter of 2022, which was accompanied by a 1.8 per cent decline in household spending and a 3.7 per cent drop in investment volume. This has prompted the Bank of Spain to make a more cautious GDP growth projection of 1.6 percent for 2023, with growth expected to stabilize at 2.3 percent in 2024 and 2.1 percent in 2025.
–IANS
World News Desk!!!
SGK/ANM