O Ano de 2015
The main short-term risk factors for the sustained growth of the
Portuguese economy without imbalances in the external accounts
are the increase in the oil price, the inability to replace imports with
domestic supply and the increase in external financing costs.
Situation in Spain
The Spanish economy is expected to have grown by 3.1% in 2015 (ex-
ceeding the expectations held at the start of the year which pointed
to a growth of around 2%) due to the combined effect of various
factors of a domestic and external nature.
Among the external factors, the contribution of the ECB’s policy
in reducing the financing costs of economic agents is noteworthy.
In addition, the fall in the oil price contributed to the reduction of
companies’ costs and the increase in private consumption.
Domestically, the change in the production structure, more directed
towards the production of tradable goods (as evidenced by the
strong growth of investment inmachinery and capital goods) and the
greater flexibilisation of the labour market, contributed towards the
dynamism of the economy, facilitating the creation of employment,
which increased by about 3%, with the unemployment rate falling to
22.1% (2.3 percentage points less than in 2014).
In spite of the improvement registered in the last two years, unem-
ployment remains at a very high level, with an expected moderate
wage increase, thus contributing to themaintenance of competitive-
ness of the export sector and to subdued inflation developments,
which remained in negative territory in 2015 (-0.5%), but which is
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