The Diplomat
The secretary general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Ángel Gurria, assured yesterday that the Spanish economy will register a “solid growth recovery” of more than 6% per year “if it controls the pandemic” and if it adopts the necessary reforms to make the most of the European recovery funds.
“Spain has been severely affected by the pandemic”, especially in the regions dependent on tourism, which concentrate between 12% and 13% of national employment, said Angel Gurría during a joint telematic press conference with the Government’s economic vice-president, Nadia Calviño, on the occasion of the presentation of the annual report Economic Survey of Spain, 2021.
“The good news is that the Government reacted in time with measures to support companies and employment, such as the ERTEs, which benefited 20% of employees in the crisis, or with measures to provide liquidity” to companies, he continued. These social and economic measures, which represent “around 20% of GDP”, added to “direct and indirect aid in support of workers, vulnerable households and companies”, now make it possible to see “some glimmers of hope, as a result of this support”.
Apart from this, Gurría stressed that Spain is going to be one of the main beneficiaries of the European recovery funds, with aid of up to 140,000 million euros -nearly 12% of Spanish GDP-, half in the form of subsidies and the other half through loans. “It’s a huge figure” that must be “put to good use”, said the OECD secretary general, who added that the Recovery Plan presented by Spain to Brussels is “ambitious and on track”.
Likewise, “vaccination is advancing at great speed, we are talking about 600,000 vaccinated daily”, the Mexican leader emphasized. “We can be confident that the pandemic will be under control by the summer as long as the other control measures are maintained”, he continued. “If the pandemic is progressively controlled”, it is foreseeable “a solid recovery” of global and European growth that, “in the case of Spain” could be “5.9% in 2021 and 6.3% in 2022”, two tenths above the forecast and “more than 6% on average per year”. This is “one of the highest levels of recovery in the OECD”, thanks, among other factors, to the reactivation of “the pent-up demand” during the crisis, which will allow an increase in consumption, the investments of the Recovery Plan and the recovery of tourism.
However, to tackle this recovery in a “lasting and inclusive” way, Spain should address the necessary reforms in relation to the quality of employment, the training of the unemployed, digital skills and pensions, in this case to ensure their sustainability through a link between retirement age and life expectancy in order to counteract the aging of the population. Once the recovery has been achieved “we will have to consolidate the medium-term fiscal challenges”, but “let’s not make the mistakes we made in 2008 and 2009, when we started fiscal consolidation before the recovery was consolidated”, he warned.
For her part, Nadia Calviño assured that the Government shares the OECD’s analysis and appreciates its recommendations from the OECD. “It is essential that economic stimuli are not withdrawn until our countries consolidate the economic recovery”, so that the economic growth itself “allows us to reduce the ratio of public debt and deficit to GDP in 2021”, she said.
The Government’s objective, according to the Vice-President, is that, “by the end of 2022”, Spain will have recovered the level of GDP prior to the pandemic and that in 2023 “the path of growth” will be recovered, although in a “more sustainable and inclusive” way. “In short”, she assured, the challenge of the Executive is to overcome “in less than three years”, the negative impact of this crisis, “compared to the ten years it took us to recover from the previous financial crisis”.
