Bittersweet data in the Catalan economy, While the quarter-on-quarter GDP (gross domestic product) grew by 1.5%, the industrial sector showed poor performance with falls in activity. The rise in the cost of raw materials and supplies weighed down the performance of the industrial sector, which fell by 1.5% in year-on-year terms. In that same period the whole of the GDP (everything that Catalonia produces) increased by 4.8%.
In a statement, the Department of Economy assured that "the industrial sector began to moderate the recovery during the second half of 2021, largely due to the problems on a global scale of bottlenecks in determining components and also due to the increase in prices. of energy and raw materials. The Ministry recalled that the situation was very different by sector and specified that those most affected by supply problems are areas such as the production of transport material and also the most energy-intensive.
In contrast, on the other side are sectors such as the manufacture of machinery and mechanical equipment, and pharmaceuticals, which "experience a favorable evolution".
The comparison of the evolution of Catalonia with the whole of Spain is positive in quarter-on-quarter terms and negative when analyzing the last 12 months. In year-on-year terms (4.8% growth), Catalonia grew five tenths less than the variation experienced by the Spanish economy and eight tenths more than the EU-27 in the same period. In quarter-on-quarter terms, the variation rate in Catalonia (the aforementioned 1.5%) is four tenths higher than that of Spain (1.1%) and nine tenths higher than that reached in the EU-27 (0.6%).
The ministry stressed that "the rise in inflation to the highest in recent decades, the war in Ukraine and fears of a new recession had a negative impact on confidence." These elements were counteracted with the impulse derived from the disappearance of sanitary restrictions, after two years of the pandemic.
The GDP draws fundamentally from the services sector, which increased by 7% in year-on-year terms. This strong growth contrasts with the moderation in construction, which advanced 0.5%. Apart from the industrial sector, the other activity that registered decreases was construction, which fell by 1.6%.
With the rise in the last quarter, the Catalan economy remains at 1.1% to recover the pre-pandemic level.
