The National Institute of Statistics (INE) will publish this Monday the Annual National Accounts of Spain in between 1995 y 2022 and will take advantage of the compilation to review the magnitudes of recent years, especially that of 2021 and, by extension, that of 2022. The estimate for 2020, which is currently provisional, will become definitive; that of 2021, which is now an advance, will become provisional; and that of 2022 will appear as progress. Before the publication occurs, controversy has already broken out.
Yes, they are, because when the Spanish economy has traditionally fallen, it usually falls more than what has been reflected in the short-term indicators and vice versa: The recovery process is usually more intense than it seemswhich is due to the fact that the indicators have a certain delay and not all of them are capable of capturing cycle changes in the short term.
In September of last year, the INE already carried out a review and raised the 2021 GDP by four tenths, from 5.1% to 5.5%. Furthermore, these changes occur in all countries, in fact the Statistics Office of the United Kingdom It did the same last week, collecting 2% more GDP growth between 2021 and 2022.
What is less common is that the review involves a very substantial change with respect to the series initially disclosed. The problem is that the pandemic made it difficult to measure the economy, which is why all economists expect a revision to occur, given that other indicators published subsequently are far from those included in the GDP, and that this will be al raisealthough there are discrepancies regarding magnitude.
Only the INE knows. There are economists who dare to make forecasts and others who avoid doing so. Raul Minguez, director of the Studies Service of the Spanish Chamber of Commerce, considers that an increase greater than 1% “it would be excessive and would require a very well-argued methodology.” For Manuel Hidalgoresearcher at EsadeEcPol and the Pablo de Olavide University, “everything that is more than 2.5% could be too much and something exceptional”, while there are some like Daniel Fuentesprofessor at the University of Alcalá and former advisor to Pedro Sánchez in La Moncloa, who believe that “the current level may be 2 or 3 points above estimates.”
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