Technology is advancing at a frenetic pace and offers the agrifood chain a large number of opportunities to make its production more efficient and sustainable. Moreover, the arrival of COVID-19 has shown that the most digitalised companies were able to continue their activities more readily than the rest. In this article we examine the degree of popularity of the different digital technologies used in the primary sector and agrifood industry based on a text analysis of over 2 million tweets on Twitter. All these technologies are essential to create a connected ecosystem that will make up the Food Chain 4.0 of the future.
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Rural destinations have emerged as the most attractive choice after the outbreak of the pandemic. Rural areas were a great alternative in the summer for those tourists wanting to travel whilst still maintaining a social distance. As a result, the loss of tourism business in the less urban regions of Spain has been much lower than in more traditional coastal destinations and cities. This article has applied big data techniques to analyse the trends in card payments made by both domestic and international tourists according to the characteristics of the destinations they visited. The results confirm the increased resilience of rural tourism destinations in 2020, suggesting a positive outlook for rural tourism in 2021.
Construction costs in Spain have increased considerably since January 2021, a rise that was prompted by the strong recovery in global demand as the economy reopened after the pandemic but was further aggravated by the outbreak of war in Ukraine. In recent months, however, the price of industrial metals on international markets has fallen sharply and the futures markets point to prices stabilising to some extent. Given this situation, the cost of construction materials in Spain is expected to moderate in 2023.
The outlook for the Spanish economy as a whole is highly dependent on the trends in inflationary pressures, especially those related to energy. The primary sector was already suffering from rising production costs and the war in Ukraine has merely aggravated the situation.
Rising production costs as a result of the war in Ukraine are affecting all the links in the food chain: production, processing, distribution and transport, although the primary sector has been particularly hard hit, also adversely affected by unfavourable weather conditions in the form of drought. Rising costs are being passed on to the food prices paid by end consumers, pushing up spending on food, particularly among lower-income households. The most positive note comes from the external sector: agrifood exports have continued to grow strongly in 2022 and competitiveness indicators do not seem to have worsened in spite of the price hikes.
The health crisis caused by COVID-19 has represented an unprecedented shock for Spain's tourism sector. Demand indicators confirm that the stoppage during the months of lockdown was total, both for international and domestic tourism. The end of the state of emergency and the recovery in international mobility within the EU have helped to revive flows of tourists to Spain. The outlook for the coming months points to a relatively rapid upturn in domestic tourism with a more gradual recovery for international tourist flows, although the delicate situation of the pandemic will still be a major source of uncertainty.
The retail trade is one of the Spanish economy’s main service sectors. An atomised sector, it is particularly labour-intensive with a widespread presence throughout the country.
The outbreak of the pandemic in early 2020 has had unprecedented repercussions in many areas of the economy. One of these has been household consumption, the main component of GDP and traditionally considered an indicator of the health of the economy and the well-being of society. Because of the restrictions on business and mobility during the health crisis caused by COVID-19, the drop in consumption was much greater than during previous crises. The positive side is that once restrictions were lifted, Spain’s consumption has rebounded more sharply in 2021 than in the past. In fact, in October the consumption tracker produced by CaixaBank Research using internal data was already 13% higher than in the same month of 2019.
Using anonymised and aggregated data from card payments made via CaixaBank point of sale terminals, we analysed whether there were any changes in tourist spending and found that the hottest areas of the country experienced slower growth in tourist expenditure between the high seasons of 2019 and 2023. We also found changes as well as changes in the pattern of expenditure during heat waves.
The indicators that have been published during the opening months of the year paint a picture of a buoyant Spanish economy in Q1 2025, albeit with a slightly less vigorous growth rate than in the previous quarter.
The savings of Spaniards went from 5,800 euros per household in 2023 to more than 7,000 in 2024. Why has the household savings rate increased and what do we expect for 2025?
In mid-2020 the Chinese government announced a series of strict rules on access to credit in the real estate sector, which had historically followed a growth model based on high leverage. However, these measures not only managed to limit debt in the sector, but also exposed its vulnerabilities. In this article, we look at the biggest risks of this strategy.
Wage incomes per employee increased by an average of 2.4% year-on-year in May according to our wages indicator. Are low-income workers’ wages growing at the same rate as those of high-income workers?
The 2021 labour reform has managed to significantly reduce the temporary employment rate in Spain: from an average of 29.7% in the period 2014-2019, it has fallen to 12.7% in 2024. This reduction has occurred across the various sectors, age groups and regions, and it has led to greater employment stability, although job turnover has increased and the number of contracts registered has decreased.
We are therefore heading towards a context with higher tariffs and in which, most likely, there will be some reconfiguration of global value chains in an attempt to compensate, insofar as possible, for the loss of attractiveness of the US market. Consequently, we are moving towards a world with greater fragmentation, lower economic growth and the risk of higher inflation.
The NGEU funds and the national investment programmes in Germany and France are the result of a long process of changes in the big economic blocs, accelerated by COVID and the war in Ukraine. These efforts seek to redefine and adapt production models to the energy transition and digitalisation in a context of uncertainty and new geopolitical dynamics.
In the US, two major economic investment and modernisation plans have been launched in recent years which represent a very different model from the European one, with a more protectionist approach. The transformative efforts in energy and technology did not arise from the need to boost the economy after COVID, as was the case in the euro area with the European NGEU funds, but rather from the need to strengthen the US’ autonomy and strategic position.
The strong start to the year introduces some upward bias into the growth forecasts for 2023. Nevertheless, the risk that the second half of the year could be weaker, as the aggressive rate hikes are finally transmitted to the economy, may limit the growth expected for 2024.
The financial markets broadly stabilised during the month of April, as investors' radar moved away from the financial turmoil of March to focus on the growth and inflation outlook, with the publication of GDP data for Q1 2023 and the corporate earnings season.