Advertisement

'Spain won't recover from crisis until 2033'

George Mills
George Mills - [email protected]
'Spain won't recover from crisis until 2033'
File photo: AFP

It will take Spain two decades, or until 2033, to see pre-crisis unemployment and growth levels, consultants PWC argue in a new report.

Advertisement

While Spain's gross domestic product will grow 42 percent by 2033, or higher than the 26 percent of Germany and France's 33 percent, the country won't see pre-crisis growth levels until 2033, the PWC report argues.

Spain will grow about the European average and at a faster rate than 17 of 27 European economies until 2033, but annual growth won't exceed 2 percent per year in that period.

PWC also say unemployment will take a long time to recover. This will hit 6.8 percent in 2033 and won't fall below 10 percent for 15 years.

Spain's current unemployment rate is 26.7 percent according to Eurostat. In Germany that figure is 5.2 percent and the European Union average is 10.9 percent.

The report from PWC comes a day after Spain revealed raw data showing unemployment fell by 2,475 in November. This was the first November drop since 1997.

Spain’s Economy Minister Luis de Guindos responded to the PWC report by saying that studies had failed to predict the intensity of the financial crisis and were now failing to predict “the intensity of recovery”.

“We have got through the second recession but we haven’t made it out of the crisis,” he stressed. 

Spain emerged from a nine-quarter recession by chalking up GDP growth of 0.1 percent in the third quarter of 2013.

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative government has predicted a 1.3-percent economic contraction in 2013 and 0.7-percent growth in 2014, which many analysts say won't be enough for net job creation.

More

Join the conversation in our comments section below. Share your own views and experience and if you have a question or suggestion for our journalists then email us at [email protected].
Please keep comments civil, constructive and on topic – and make sure to read our terms of use before getting involved.

Please log in to leave a comment.

See Also