Spain optimistic on job creation at start of new year

The Spanish Economy Minister Luis De Guindos opened 2014 by promising the New Year will bring good news for the 26 percent of population who are currently out of work. Depending on which study one favors, be it that of the Ministry of Employment or the National Institute of Statistics, there are between just under 5 and 6 million people currently out of work in Spain. Speaking in an interview on radio station, Cadena Cope, on Wednesday morning, De Guindos was optimistic the New Year will see a notable improvement on that. "The projections we have in the Ministry of the Economy for 2014 are that there will be a net creation of employment, which will be even greater than that we predicted when we elaborated the budget,"said De Guindos, who in September 2013 had commented that 2014 would be the first year to see jobs created since the start of the crisis. "The dynamic in the job market will be much improved," he added. The Spanish government has predicted growth of 0.7 percent for Spain's GNP for 2014 and believes unemployment will fall from 26.6 percent at the end of 2013 to 25.9 percent by the end of this year, although De Guindos did advise, there was still, "a long way to go," while insisting that in terms of taxes there would be "no significant changes at all." The start of the New Year sees the end of the EU bailout of Spain's banks, which De Guindos believes will help the recovery in his country. "We should all congratulate ourselves for the end of the bailout which has ended with one of the problems which was impeding Spain's recovery, which was the lack of solvency in the financial system,"he said, adding that the banks now had a role to play in facilitating credit to small and medium sized companies.