Page 26 - Economic report 2020

due to the impact of inflation and rising interest rates, from a year-on-year variation rate of 6.9%
in the first quarter to 2.6% in the fourth.

The economic recovery impacted all economic sectors but at a different intensity. Services played
a major role in the economic revival due to their relatively high importance (67% of GDP) and
the major rebound seen in 2022 (+6.5%). Within services, the subsectors that saw the strongest
growth were commerce, transport and hotels
Services linked to tourism and leisure and catering, which increased 16.5% year on
lead growth in the Spanish economy. year in 2022 (and 15.6% in 2021, after falling
25.5% in 2020), and artistic and recreational
activities (+13.8%). In contrast, gross value
added (GVA) shrank 5.7% in financial activities; 1.4% in activities linked to public services
(administration, health, education and social services), and 1.1% in agriculture. Industry, affected
by the supply crisis, showed positive behaviour (+3%) but weaker than in overall GDP, and
construction rebounded to 4.1% due to the reactivation of demand, despite rising building costs.

In 2022, the Spanish economy was one of Spain recorded GDP growth that was
those that grew most in the Eurozone, by 5.5%, much higher than in the Eurozone.
easily better than the average for the Economic
and Monetary Union (EMU) (+3.5%). This was
largely the result of Spain’s accumulated delay GDP GROWTH IN SPAIN AND THE
in the process of post-Covid recovery due to EUROZONE - Annual variation rates, as % Chart 3.1
its strong dependence on the tourism sector
- one of the sectors most crippled by the crisis.
This improvement has already been reflected
24
in this indicator in 2022.

The costs deriving from the considerable rise in
inflation in 2022, together with the measures
adopted by the European Central Bank to deal
with this inflationary risk, have moderated
the growth of the Spanish economy, but less
than initially expected, which explains why the Spain Eurozone
economic estimates were revised upwards, f: European Commission forecasts (May 2023).
External environment of the Andorran economy | III. Spanish economy
especially in the last part of the year. Source: Eurostat.

In 2022, both domestic and foreign demand made a positive contribution to GDP growth. On
the one hand, national demand added 3.1 points to GDP growth, after 5.2 points in the previous
year. On the other hand, foreign demand made a positive contribution of 2.4 points (0.3 points
in 2021), thanks to the recovery in exports of
both goods and services (tourism). Specifically, Domestic and foreign demand
the inflow of foreign tourists reached 71.56 made a positive contribution,
million in 2022, an increase of 129% against
the previous year. This exceptional variation similar to GDP growth.
should be qualified in that foreign tourism is
still 14.3% below the figure before Covid-19 (Spain received a historic high of 83.5 million foreign
tourists in 2019). Finally, the Spanish economy ended 2022 with a surplus in the current account
balance, for the tenth consecutive year, in this case 0.6% of GDP, a percentage that is still below
the 2.1% achieved before the pandemic (2019).

Within domestic demand, private consumption was one of the main drivers of the economic
recovery, especially in the first half of the year, since there were still pandemic restrictions in