The Diplomat
The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, closed yesterday XIII Edition of the international financial forum Spain Investors Day, which brought together major international investors and in which he exposed the “extraordinary strengths” of the Spanish economy in the face of the uncertainty generated by the war in Ukraine.
“Spain has extraordinary strengths,” said the head of the Executive during the meeting, held at the Mandarin Oriental Ritz Hotel in Madrid and attended for two days by the 47 listed companies and international investors, members of the Government’s economic team and representatives of regulatory bodies.
According to Sánchez, the main national and international organizations have assured that the Spanish economy is going to be one of those that “navigate better in this period of uncertainty”. “After the pandemic, after the war broke out, Spain achieves the best employment data in its history, grows above the Eurozone and registers the lowest inflation rate in the entire European Union,” he said.
According to Pedro Sánchez, Spain has already received more than 31,000 million euros of European recovery funds and has been “the first country to comply with the requirements to obtain the disbursements from the European Commission”. These funds, he assured, have already reached more than 100,000 companies and almost 6,000 of the country’s 8,000 municipalities, and have enabled the launching of calls for tenders for 43,060 million euros.
In addition, he continued, Spain is going to ask the European Commission for the additional 94 billion euros in transfers and loans provided for in the addendum to the Recovery Plan, aimed at expanding the twelve strategic projects for economic recovery and transformation (PERTE) and creating new financing instruments.
During his closing speech, Sánchez also recalled the packages of measures approved by the Government to address the economic and social consequences of the invasion of Ukraine, which have already mobilized 45 billion euros, and assured that Spain is “one of the best places in the world to do business and therefore to invest”. “Keep betting on Spain, because Spain will be up to the task,” he concluded.
Nadia Calviño
For her part, the First Vice President and Minister of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, Nadia Calviño, stated during the lunch-colloquium that Spain has “faced the challenges of pandemic and war well” and will continue “in this line with a responsible economic policy, responding to the urgent and without losing sight of the important, with fiscal responsibility, social justice and progressive structural reforms.”
According to Calviño, the Government’s Recovery Plan “allows us to explain the evolution of the Spanish economy in 2021 and 2022” in indicators such as GDP growth, the quality of employment or public and private investment, and has contributed to the fact that foreign investment has increased “by almost 55% in the first quarter of 2022”, which represents “a clear sign that the business climate in Spain and the confidence provided by the Recovery Plan make Spain one of the most attractive destinations for foreign investment”.
