Spain Business
Spain Business Brief - Friday January 9 2009
By h.b. - Jan 9, 2009 - 1:16 PM
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Industrial production in Spain has seen an historic fall registering a 15 % reduction over November.
Car manufacture was down 39.3%, and other industries such as metal, computing, and furniture have also seen dramatic falls.
The reduction is the seventh consecutive month to see falls and the largest reduction for 16 years according to the data from the National Statistics Institute.
Following yesterday’s news that Spain saw 1 million people joining the dole queues last year, the Spanish Prime Minister has said that this year will be ‘hard’ but he also claimed that the employment situation will start to improve in March when the impact of his new public investment programs would be noted.
The leader of the P.P. opposition, Mariano Rajoy, has called on the Zapatero to make unemployment his ‘urgent priority’. The areas of Aragón, Murcia and Valencia have been hardest hit by the unemployment.
La Caixa savings bank has forecast that the recession will last until 2010 and says the economy will shrink by 1.3% this year. The latest predictions from the bank say that unemployment will reach 16% and that the crisis will be less severe but longer than the one seen in 1993.
Meanwhile it has been revealed that real estate companies lost 61.4% of their value on the stock market last year.
Barajas Airport in Madrid suspended operations this afternoon as two inches or so of snow landed on the runways and all road access to the airport was blocked.
The airport authorities hope to be open again this evening with inbound flights being diverted to Valencia, Alicante, Zaragoza and Sevilla.
Access to Barajas was only available by Metro for a time.
Before the added trouble because of the weather, Iberia was obliged to cancel 41 flights and saw delays on 62% of its operations as the unofficial work to rule by SEPLA pilots continues. The two sides have been holding more talks today, as the chaos continues.
Iberia has meanwhile sent out disciplinary letters to another 10 of its pilots.
And finally,
As the cold spell continues to bite, experts have been giving the Spanish some advice on how to save on heating costs. If you have central heating, reducing the thermostat from 22 to 20 degrees will save you 10% on the bill at the end of the month, according to the experts.