Sanchez anticipates a "slight rise" of inflation, before continuing its downward path in the coming months

Requests that the approval of the financial authority be accelerated and insists on reforming the European electricity market

27 Feb. () –

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has anticipated a “slight rise” in inflation on Monday, before continuing its downward path in the coming months, mainly due to the rise in the price of energy in recent weeks.

“We have to see how inflation evolves over the next few months. We contemplate a slight rise, but then a drop in inflation over the next few months as a result of the fact that there has been a rise in the price of energy in recent weeks “, explained the president in an interview in Informativos Telecinco, collected by Europa Press.

While waiting for the advance data of the Consumer Price Index for the month of February to be known tomorrow, the Chief Executive recalled that in five months Spain has managed to cut inflation by five points, being the country with the lowest rate of the eurozone.

According to the latest data published by the National Institute of Statistics, the CPI fell two tenths in January in relation to the previous month, but raised its interannual rate by two tenths, up to 5.9%, due to the higher price of telephone services and of fuel after the end of the general rebate on fuel and the lower reductions in clothing and footwear compared to the same month in 2022.

One of the current concerns for the Spanish is the rise in food prices. In January, the latest data available, they grew by 15.4% in the interannual rate, three tenths less than in December, after the VAT reduction applied to certain products in the shopping basket, in force since January 1.

Faced with this rise, the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz, has proposed capping the price of some foods, but the President of the Executive believes that “the important thing” is that citizens know that the Government is monitoring the evolution of these prices to ensure that the impact of the war and its economic and social consequences are as small as possible.

“We are one of the countries that have allocated the most public resources to VAT reductions for both food and energy,” Sánchez stressed.

APPROVE THE FINANCIAL AUTHORITY

Asked about the rise in mortgages, mainly those signed at a variable rate, the President of the Government has insisted that it is “fundamental” that the approval within the Cortes Generales of the financial authority be accelerated, which will be in charge of monitoring any bad practice of the financial sector.

“Maximum empathy and maximum commitment”, the head of the Executive has transferred, after insisting that the Executive is going to allocate “all possible economic resources of the State” to protect families, companies and industries.

Apart from the measures that can be taken at the national level, Sánchez has insisted on those that are promoted from the European level. On this point, he stressed that the ‘Iberian solution’ in Spain has allowed taxpayers to save more than 5,000 million euros due to the rise in energy prices, but he stressed that one of the main challenges facing Europe Now it is the reform of the electricity market, decoupling the price of gas from the evolution of the price of electricity.

“That is the task ahead of us and it is what Spain has been working on for many months now, even before the war, and we hope that this year we can finally have that electricity market reform”, he concluded.