MADRID: The Bank of Spain improves its economic forecast for 2015. The Spanish economy is predicted to grow by 2.8% this year. The recovery of Spain’s economy now appears to be gaining firmer ground.
The national central bank has improved its forecast for the economy this year substantially, raising the anticipated growth in GDP from 2% to 2.8% after a positive first quarter in which year-on-year growth has risen to 2.5%. The new forecast is now even more optimistic than the figure of 2.4% figure put forward by President Mariano Rajoy during the recent parliamentary debate on the State of the Nation.
At the same time the Banco de España predicts that unemployment figures will continue to fall during 2015, while in terms of inflation the bank sits on the fence, stating that the figures will depend to a large extent on the price of fuel, which in turn depends on Brent Crude prices. However, if fuel and energy prices are excluded from the equation, a “modest increase” is expected after the negative figure of recent quarters.
