Spain Business Brief - Monday November 3 2008

Spain Business Brief - Monday November 3 2008
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By h.b. - Nov 3, 2008 - 12:52 PM

Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in Congress - Photo EFE

Zapatero offers help for the unemployed in Spain with their mortgage payments.

Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, made a statement at noon today outlining new ideas for the creation of employment. Among the measures is the idea to pay employers 1,500 € a year for taking on those unemployed with family responsibilities, but the main new idea is to give a partial moratorium for mortgage payers when they lose their jobs. The help will be for a maximum of 50% of the debt that is owed, with a maximum amount of 500 € a month, and can be put off for a maximum period of two years, and only on mortgages where the total amount is less than 170,000 €. The help will also be made available for self-employed or autonomous workers, but in their case they will have to be inactive and have families to support.

It’s thought that some 500,000 people could benefit from the new measures. The Prime Minister also confirmed an earlier statement that the time granted for a home savings account to be valid is to be extended. The measures are to be approved in the cabinet meeting on Friday and Zapatero said that the measures show the Government’s main objective is to support those families with most difficulties.

The European Commission in Brussels considers that the recession in Spain will last for all of next year, and that unemployment will be over 15% in 2010.
They consider that growth will fall by 0.2% next year and only place Ireland in a worse situation than Spain.
The entire Eurozone is also forecast to enter into recession and will only come out of it in 2009.
Spanish Minster for Employment and Immigration, Celestino Corbacho, had already admitted that unemployment will continue to grow in Spain until the second half of 2009.

The state bail out aid which may be given to banks in Spain will be kept secret only for a period of months. There has been a debate here on whether transparency is needed, or whether press coverage results in undesirable effects in bail-out cases. Now the PP and the Government are negotiating a deal when the names will be given, but only after a period of time so that the announcement will not be damaging to them.

Car sales in Spain continue to fall, down 40% year on year in October at just 77,683. Over the first ten months of the year car sales here are down almost 24% compared to the same period last year.

The President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, has repeated his statement that Repsol will have to leave the country. He considers that recent efforts to reach an agreement with the Government have come ‘too late’. He says they have to go as they had eight months to negotiate and other companies are keen to invest in the country.

New regulations in Spain from Saturday mean that taxes and other extra charges can no longer be hidden in advertising for airline tickets. Airlines have to show the final price in all their publicity from now on, with fuel surcharges and airport taxes included.
It’s an E.U. initiative designed to allow the public to better compare offers in the marketplace.

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