Continue reforms to make growth work for all in Spain, OECD says
Spain has made a successful economic recovery, underpinned by strong employment growth, gains in competitiveness and favourable external and financial conditions. The current economic expansion offers an opportunity to speed up efforts to increase the resilience of public finances, enhance job creation and ensure a more sustainable and inclusive economy that benefits all Spaniards, according to a new report from the OECD.
The latest OECD Economic Survey of Spain looks at the multiple factors behind the recovery, as well as the challenges facing the country moving forward. The Survey projects growth of 2.6% this year, 2.2% in 2019 and 1.9% in 2020, and lays out an agenda for making the economy more inclusive and enabling further expansion.
The Survey, presented in Madrid by OECD secretary-general Angel Gurría and Nadia Calviño, Spain’s Minister of Economy and Enterprise, highlights sizeable risks to the global outlook, particularly as concerns slowing global trade growth, which could undermine exports and job creation.
“The Spanish economy has shown impressive performance, becoming more competitive and growing faster than most of its euro area peers,” Mr Gurría said. “The challenge going forward is ensuring that growth is more inclusive and benefits everyone, while at the same time maintaining financial stability and fiscal sustainability.
“Further efforts are needed to ensure that the fruits of economic recovery are shared more widely and no one is left behind. The falling but still high levels of unemployment are a lasting legacy of the crisis, which will require a stronger focus on achieving greater convergence among regions as well as new policies to improve educational outcomes, boost skills, adapt to the needs of the digital economy, and create high quality jobs,” Mr Gurría said.
The Survey points out a range of regional disparities across Spain, with wide variation in income inequality, poverty, labour market and educational outcomes across regions. It also highlights low levels of intra-regional migration as a driver of regional inequalities in income and well-being. Together with barriers to achieving a truly single market, these differences require policies for more unified labour and product markets.
To tackle the challenges posed by regional disparities, the Survey proposes Spain increase spending on training and job search assistance, while removing current barriers to competition between training centres across regions. Ensuring full portability of social and housing benefits across regions, through the provision of temporary assistance by the region of origin or the central government, would improve labour mobility.
Introducing a single point of contact for employment and social services to provide integrated support for jobseekers would improve coordination and information sharing, while targeting existing financial incentives for lifelong learning to low-qualified workers would improve employment opportunities and incomes.
More effective use of taxes and transfer policies could lower inequality, the Survey said. Providing individualised support to students at the risk of failing at an early stage has successfully contributed to lower early school leaving rates in some regions, and could be extended nationwide.
Policies to further improve competition and innovation will be key to boosting productivity growth and reducing regional disparities, the survey said.
Eliminating existing regulations based on firm size and strengthening implementation of the Market Unity Law – which seeks to ensure that firms are not subject to any additional requirements in other regions than their own – is essential. Coordinating regional and national innovation support programmes and greater use of ex-post evaluation and performance-based funding could also improve innovation outcomes, the survey said.
An Overview of the Economic Survey, with the main conclusions, is accessible at: http://www.oecd.org/eco/surveys/economic-survey-spain.htm.
