Spain´s tourism industry has created a positive current account balance during 2022 while Germany and Italy stagnate
Spain will close 2022 with a greater recovery compared to its competitors in Europe despite the impact of inflation. According to a report by Funcas (socio and economic think tank), the current account balance in Spain will end positively in 2022 thanks to the great upturn in tourism.
However, experts from Goldman Sachs, an American multinational investment bank and financial services company, predict that Germany and Italy “will be more affected by the energy crisis”, unlike Spain and France. The main reason is that “the former depend more on imports of Russian gas, while the latter has more diversified energy sources and are relatively more intensive in the service sector”.
In this sense, Goldman Sachs says that Spain “still has room to recover from the Covid-19 crisis”, which could further improve the results. As of October, only around 87% of the 2019 tourist thresholds have been recovered, that is, 2023 could be the time for a full return to pre-pandemic results.
The company also said that the tourist dependence of the country will be what prevents a financial and structural crisis. “In a year in which we are spending more money on oil, we are compensating for it with exports, and with tourism,” said the expert from the School of Finance (AFI), David Cano, who sees the sector as an industry fundamental.
Cano added, “the great novelty is that we are being able to export: we spend less but the most important thing is that we earn more.” During the pandemic, tourism was a replacement for construction”, and, although it already recovered in 2021, the biggest boom was expected for 2022.
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