La Rioja

• La Rioja has just over 322,000 inhabitants, 0.7% of the whole country, making it the least populated region in Spain.
• The GDP of La Rioja is 8.614 billion euros, which accounts for 0.7% of Spanish GDP, so it is also the region that makes the smallest contribution to the national total.
• With a GDP per capita of 27,279 euros, it is ranked sixth in the country and it is 7.0% higher than the Spanish average, although the gap with the average has been narrowing due to slower economic growth.
• The region's productive sectors are notable for the relative importance of the agricultural and manufacturing sectors, which account for 6.1% and 22.4% of GDP respectively (2.9% and 12.8% in Spain); particularly noteworthy is its prominent role in wine production: it is the fourth largest producing region (2021). However, the tertiary sector is of relatively little importance, in trade, transportation, hotels and restaurants and leisure (21.5% vs. 26.2%) and industry-related services (21.6% vs. 29.2%).
• Goods exports account for a significantly lower percentage of regional GDP than the national average (21.4% vs. 26.2%). In 2022, La Rioja exported goods worth 2.083 billion euros, representing 0.5% of Spanish exports. Almost 40% of exported goods are agri-food products, in particular wine, followed by fruit, pulses, meat and processed foods. These are followed by footwear (9.2% of the total) and chemical products (5.5%), especially plastics and colourants.

At CaixaBank Research, we estimate that La Rioja's GDP grew by 4.9% in 2022, below the Spanish average (5.5%). This sluggish performance compared to Spain was due to the lesser importance of the most buoyant activities in the region (tertiary sector, in particular tourism) and the weakness of its agri-food industry.

For 2023, our forecasts indicate GDP growth of 1.8%, slightly below the national average (2.0%). On the plus side, the strong recovery in exports was notable. However, agriculture is being hit hard by the drought and inflation and higher interest rates will hamper household spending. Meanwhile, the NGEU funds will have a smaller impact than in other regions that are more dependent on the tertiary sector.

La Rioja's labour market is slightly more sluggish than across the country as a whole. After the number of registered workers affiliated to Social Security grew by 2.6% in 2022 (3.9% on average in Spain), in May this year it had grown by 1.6% year-on-year (vs. 2.9%), 4.7% higher than in the same month in 2019 (vs. 7.1%); in the last year, job creation in information and communications, education and health has been outstanding. As for the unemployment rate, in Q1 2023 it stood at 10.1%, far lower than the Spanish average (13.3%).

Service activities are performing somewhat more modestly than in the rest of the country: last year, the turnover of the services sector grew by 13.0%, 7 points fewer than Spain as a whole, while in the first quarter of 2023 it had grown by 8.5% year-on-year (vs. 10.1%) and 23.9% compared to the same period in 2019 (vs. 22.4%). Hit by sharp price increases, retail trade sales recorded a steep decline (in volume) in 2022 (–2.5% vs. –1.0% on average nationally) and, although they recovered in January-April this year (+6.5% year-on-year vs. +6.9%), they remain below pre-pandemic levels (–0.6% vs. +2.2%).

As regards La Rioja's industrial sector, after the IPI rose at a similar-to-average rate in 2022 (2.3% vs. 2.4%), it fell sharply in January-April (–3.2% year-on-year vs. +0.7% on average in Spain), so it remains far below 2019 levels (–5.5% vs. –1.1%).

La Rioja's exports of goods grew by 13.2% in 2022 (22.9% in Spain), supported by sales of semi-finished goods (especially iron and steel), capital goods (transport equipment) and food (fruit and pulses). Following a sharp rise in the first three months of 2023 (+28.6% year-on-year, twice that of the country as a whole), they were 20.6% higher than in 2019 (+40.9% on average).