Spain Business Brief - Tuesday July 21 2009

Spain Business Brief - Tuesday July 21 2009
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By h.b. - Jul 21, 2009 - 12:40 PM
Foreign tourist numbers to Spain down 11.4% in the first six months of the year

Photo - Patronato de Turismo

The number of foreign tourists visiting Spain over the first six months of the year, compared to last, was down 11.4%, with the fall in the number of British visitors down by 16.3%.
Despite that the British remained the largest group out of the 23.5 million visitors to Spain over the first half of the year. Second was the Germans down 11%, but together the British and the Germans made up 48% of the total.
The numbers come from FRONTUR, the survey on tourist movements put together by the Ministry for Industry, Tourism and Trade.
Most popular region of the country was Cataluña with 5.9 million visitors, down 12.5%, followed by the Canaries with 4.03 million, down 15.4%, the Balearic Islands with 3.7 million down 8%, and Andalucia with 3.2 million, down 11.5%.
Biggest looser was the Valencia region with 2.2 million tourists, 18 percent down, while the only region of the country to see an improvement was Madrid where the 2.3 million visitors was up 1.6% on last year.

The latest index of business confidence in Spain has shown that Spanish businessmen now think the worst of the recession is past. Confidence has risen for the first time since 2007, with the Chambers of Commerce across the country considering that bottom was hit during the first quarter of the year.
The ICE business confidence index for the second quarter came in at minus 19 points, 8.6 points better than the lows seen in April.

The number of foreign workers registered with the Spanish social security system saw its fourth month of increases in June. The number of foreigners was up 0.66% over the month, but that number is still 10.66% lower than 12 months ago.
There are now 1,929,937 foreigners paying into the Spanish social security system, 10.66% of the total, according to the data from the Ministry of Employment and Immigration.

The National Council for Market Values, the body which oversees the Stock Market in Spain, has called on the Unicaja and CajaSur savings banks in Andalucía to give details on their merger, following reports of the same in the press today. Both banks have since confirmed talks are underway, but add that no formal agreement has yet been reached. CajaSur is owned by the Catholic Church, but reports indicate that the church has indicated that it agrees with the Unicaja merger.

There is a new attempt to reach Social Dialogue in Spain, the name given to the attempt by the Government, CEOE Employers and Unions to reach a wide ranging agreement on the wage round and employment conditions in the current recession.
The latest proposal from the Government, made during talks on Monday, is a 1.5% cut in Social Security payments for employers, half a point now and a whole point in 2010. The employers had been calling for a reduction of 5% from the Government, while earlier Union UGT said that any cuts in payments for the employers should be ‘reversible, temporary and less than 5%’.
The Government has calculated that the 1.5% fall will cost it 4.5 billion € in income.

The wealth of Spanish families has fallen in the current recession back to levels last seen in September 1998 when the net worth was put at 603.97 billion €.
The number represents a 26% fall in wealth over the past year after a further 9% fall registered in the first quarter of this year according to the date from the Bank of Spain.

Spanish real estate company Grupo San José, which has just launched on the Stock Market on Monday with a value of 879 million €, has admitted current losses and said it will not be paying any dividend.
It shows that even a loss-making firm can have a good day on the market in its first day of trading where the share price rose 5.13% to reach 13,52 € above the launch price.

And finally,
The recession has done away with one of the industrial symbols of Valencia. Celestica, which took over the old IBM plant in the city, has now closed, with the loss of 580 jobs. The company has already closed its operations in Barcelona, where 480 jobs were lost.

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