According to the government, 2017 will end with the Balearic economy having grown by 3.8%. Employment, trade and industry minister, Iago Negueruela, predicts that growth will be 3.5% next year, a slight decline but one that has been forecast. Growth in 2016 was 4.1% (government figure), and it was expected that there would be something of a slowdown after a leap of just over one per cent from 2015.
Economic crisis produced negative growth figures in 2009 (minus 2.7%) and 2010. Between 2011 and 2014, growth ranged from zero to one per cent. Once the economy started to really pick up in 2015, so incomes also started to recover. Since 2015, says the director-general for work and economic affairs, Llorenç Pou, the accumulated increase has been 7.3%.
Negueruela points out that salaries in Spain as a whole have remained frozen, while there have been significant increases in the Balearics.
Growth in 2018, the government believes, will be assisted by increased salaries that are the result of agreements in the hotel and retail sector. As an example, the collective bargaining agreement as it applies to hotel workers will see a five per cent rise in salaries in 2018. Improved incomes, the government predicts, will result in higher consumer spending.
Negueruela also points to a lengthening of the tourism season as a positive factor for growth, an aspect of which is more employment. This is also forecast to grow in the new year.
2 comments
To be able to write a comment, you have to be registered and logged in
Presumably Mike it's the tourism that has boosted growth while the manufacturing sector - much vaunted by the anti-tourism brigade - is in further decline (assuming the figures are correct).
The mind boggles how can the Balearic manufacturing slump 27% and the economy grow ???? Typical government sh....t ,