Catalan economy to grow 3%, says Barcelona chamber of commerce

The Catalan economy is set to grow by 3% in 2018 and 2.5% in 2019, according to the Barcelona chamber of commerce.

In an event on Wednesday, the organization updated their estimations for the country’s GDP this year, downwards from 3.1%.

Reasons given for the slight slowdown of this growth were the “weakening of the internal demand” and “less dynamism for investments,” as well as wider factors such as the increasing “trade protectionism” worldwide and the likely increase of interest rate in the Eurozone.

In any case, this would mean a slight slowdown compared to the 3.3% GDP growth for 2017 but Catalonia’s economy will still perform better than the Spanish and EU averages, which in 2017 were growing at 3% and 2.4%.

Economy progressing "solidly"

According to the head of Barcelona’s chamber of commerce, Miquel Valls, the Catalan economy “is going well” and is progressing “solidly.”

He noted that the country has been growing at a rate higher than 2.8% for the past four years and he also assessed “very positively” the progression of Catalonia’s economy in the past 20 years. 

In July, the Catalan government estimated a 2.9% growth for 2018, whereas bank BBVA foresaw on Tuesday a 2.5% increase this year.

So far what is certain is that in the first and second terms, the Catalan economy grew 0.7% for each of them –if the progression stayed the same the rest of the year, the GDP’s increase would be 2.8% at the end of the year.