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Spain slips back into recession too

Posted: 30th April 2012

Spain has also suffered a double-dip recession, it has been announced today.

Less than a week after it was revealed that the UK had fallen back into recession, the Instituto Nacional de Estadistica (INE) announced that the Spanish economy shrank by 0.3% in the first three months of 2012. This followed a 0.3% contraction during the final quarter of 2011.

INE attributed the performance to the "negative contribution by domestic demand, partly compensated by the positive contribution of foreign demand".

Last week, Standard & Poor’s downgraded Spain's credit rating for the second time this year - from A to BBB+ - and the news that Spain would enter a double-dip recession was widely expected today.

In his Business Blog for the Guardian, Graeme Wearden wrote that Spain and the UK are among the first countries to report data for the first three months of 2012, but, including Spain, there are now at least eight eurozone countries in recession.

"The other seven are Belgium, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Greece and Slovenia.

"Looking outside the eurozone, but within the EU, we can include the UK, Denmark and the Czech Republic," he wrote.