Tourism and exports boost Spain’s economy in the first quarter

The Spanish Prime Minister has been impressed by the country’s economic start to the year.

The Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy last week increased the country’s economic outlook for 2017 based on an extremely strong first quarter that saw Spain’s tourism and export industries perform brilliantly.

The government now expects national GDP to increase by 2.7% this year, up from 2.5% at the turn of year. This stronger-than-expected start to 2017 is seen most starkly in hotel, flight and resort data that show record-levels of tourism into the country…

Additionally, the Spanish real estate market is posting encouraging levels of interest and activity.

“Recent data for the first quarter of the year, as well as national and international forecasts, have pushed us to revise our growth forecast,” said Rajoy.

This optimism matches that of the Bank of Spain, which earlier this month upped its growth forecast to 2.8% GDP, setting Spain on course to become one of Europe’s star economic performers once again in 2017.

A slightly more sober but no less encouraging GDP increase was posted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last week. The IMF expects Spain’s GDP to increase by 2.6% this year, putting the country ahead of the USA and the UK for the second-year running.

The Prime Minister expects GDP to continue to increase in 2018 and 2019, with this growth expected to add around 500,000 new jobs each year, meaning that by 2020 there will be an extra one million Spaniards in employment .

The jobless rate remains a concern, with Spain’s unemployment figure of 18.6% still among the highest in Europe. However, Rajoy told reporters that his government’s budget plans are prioritising this figure, and hope to reduce unemployment to below 16% by 2018.