The First Vice President of the Government and Minister of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Nadia Calvinobelieves that Spain “has left behind the peak” of the inflation and that this will go down progressively throughout this yearto around 2% in 2023.
Calviño, who this afternoon has intervened telematically in the XXXVII Meeting of the Cercle d’Economia, which is being held in Barcelona, has assured that ehe rise in prices, driven by the ukrainian waris currently one of the main concerns of the Government.
“It is a concern that concerns us and that we have to tackle as soon as possible”, stressed the minister, who considers that inflation, which rose to 9.8% in March, has already reached its maximum and in the second part of the year will be reduced. Her forecast is that it will be over 2% in 2023.
In this sense, it has been convinced that the agreement reached with Portugal to decouple wholesale prices from Iberian electricity market will help lower the CPI.
Despite the current situation of uncertainty, marked by the pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the high cost of energy, the Spanish economy is showing great strength and continues to grow solidly and sustainably, according to the minister.
The government, he has said, is approaching its economic policy on the basis of “maximum prudence”attending to fiscal responsibility, social justice and structural reforms “looking to the future”.
In fact, thanks to the recovery plan, the arrival of the Next Generation funds and this economic policy of the Government, “everyone expects that Spain will maintain a strong growth rate in 2022 and 2023”, above the European average and the main world economies, with a growth rate of over 4%, Calviño stated.
The economic vice president has specified that this growth, in any case, “will be very determined” by factors such as the length of the warthe evolution of energy prices, the recovery of tourism or the pace of deployment of the recovery plan.
“We have a clear roadmap, the recovery plan, the European funds to make it happen and the intention to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity. We are also confident that we will respond well to the challenges arising from this crisis,” he added.
Looking back, the minister recalled that these two years have been marked by the response to the pandemic, in which the Government has adopted “unprecedented” measures to protect the productive fabric, family income and employment.
All this has led to the issuance of 140,000 million euros of public debt that “we have already begun to absorb”, given that a misuse of this response to the crisis “could weigh down future generations”.
An example of how the Spanish economy is recovering more quickly from this latest crisis is that investment has grown and that quality employment is being created thanks to the latest labor reform, with 1.8 million new permanent contracts since then .
Another indicator of the recovery of the labor market is that there are 17,000 people covered by the ERTE, and the tax collection indicator is also positive.