Spanish GDP Rises 0.4 Percent

Spain’s economy grew at its fastest quarterly pace since 2008 during the first three months of the year, according to the country’s National Statistics Institute.

Gross domestic product (GDP) rose by 0.4% in the January to March period, the data showed.

Compared with a year earlier, Spain’s economy grew by 0.6%, the fastest pace in three years.

But retail sales dropped by 0.5% in March, the biggest fall since December.

Jose Luis Martinez, an economist at Citi, said: “Retail sales were very weak, and that’s a little worrying.”

He said the drop in sales could reflect weak domestic demand, suggesting growth in the second quarter of the year would be slower than in the first.

Despite signs of improvement in Spain’s economy, the number of people in employment fell by 184,600 in the quarter just below 17 million, the lowest level for the first quarter since 2008.

The country’s unemployment rate edged up to 25.9% from 25.7% in the fourth quarter of 2013.

via BBC

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency
trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza