Spain

With European Central Bank policy makers preparing to hike interest rates yet again at their March meeting, Spanish banks have been paying their customers even less for their savings, Bloomberg News reported. Spain’s lenders paid 0.37% on new household deposits with an agreed maturity of as long as one year in January, down from 0.42% in December, according to ECB data published Friday. By comparison, the rate for the savings of French families jumped to 2.34% from 2.13%, while Dutch banks paid 2.03%.

Investors boosted bets on the peak for European Central Bank interest rates to 4% for the first time after inflation in France and Spain came in unexpectedly hot, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices in France jumped by a euro-era record 7.2% from a year ago in February as food and services costs increased. Spain saw a 6.1% advance. Analysts had estimated price gains would remain unchanged at 7% in France and slow in Spain.

The European Parliament´s budget control committee said Wednesday it has found no evidence of deceit or fraud in Spain’s handling of the 31 billion euros ($33 billion) it has received so far in special European Union post-pandemic recovery funds, the Associated Press reported. But a visiting delegation urged the Madrid government to be more transparent and flexible in its use of the funds and in providing public information about them.

Spain and Morocco are ready to overcome years of strained diplomatic relations with new business and energy deals, while ties between France and the North African nation remain frosty, Bloomberg News reported. Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is planning to announce Thursday an €800 million ($869 million) credit line for Spanish investments in Morocco and 20 agreements that range from developing renewable energy to building water desalinization plants.

Spanish inflation unexpectedly quickened in January after a five-month run of slowing price growth, prompting traders to boost their bets on how high the European Central Bank will raise interest rates, Bloomberg News reported. Consumer prices advanced by 5.8% from a year ago, up from the previous month’s 5.5% increase, the statistics institute in Madrid said Monday. That’s well above the 4.8% median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists, though the predictions ranged from 3.8% to 6.5%.

Spain will seek European Union permission to extend its temporary cap on reference prices for natural gas and coal used by power plants until at least the end of 2024, Energy Minister Teresa Ribera said on Monday, Reuters reported. The so-called Iberian mechanism, in place in Spain and Portugal after the two countries reached a deal with the European Commission in the spring of 2022, is a joint scheme through which fossil fuel plants' power costs are subsidised in a bid to bring down soaring electricity prices.

The number of people registering as jobless in Spain fell slightly in December from a month earlier, ending 2022 at a 15-year low, data from the Labour Ministry showed on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The number of jobless fell by 1.52%, or by 43,727 people, leaving 2.84 million people out of work. It is the lowest rate since 2007, when 2.2 million were out of work. "This data shows that labour protection measures are working," Labour Minister Yolanda Diaz said in a post on Twitter.

Spanish retail sales fell 0.6% in November from a year earlier on a seasonally and calendar-adjusted basis, after rising 1.0% in October, the National Statistics Institute (INE) said on Thursday, Reuters reported. As shoppers grapple with the rising cost of living exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, food sales in Spain recorded an annual decrease of 3.6% in November, INE said. Meanwhile, sales of other goods grew 0.5% year-on-year.

Spain's trade deficit in the first six months of the year widened almost six-fold from the same period a year earlier to 32 billion euros ($32.6 billion), the Industry Ministry said on Thursday, Reuters reported. The outcome was wider than the deficit for the whole of 2021 and compared with a 5.4 billion euro deficit in the first six months a year ago, the ministry said in its monthly report. Excluding energy imports and exports, the trade deficit in the period was 6.1 billion euros, the ministry said.

Spain will impose new taxes on large banks and energy companies, wresting billions of euros from business to fund policies to ease the impact of record inflation on consumers, Bloomberg News reported. The levies on both financial institutions and energy firms will last for two years. The government expects the former to raise about 1.5 billion euros ($1.5 billion) per year, while the windfall tax on energy firms, which have benefited from surging prices, will collect 2 billion euros a year.