Country sees strong development
From a macro economic perspective, Spain has reaped a bountiful harvest over the past 25 years.
The Mediterranean nation has made its mark on the in-ternational scene through the remarkable transformation of its economy, which has given it a growing competitive edge.
Currently, it has overtaken Mexico to rank eighth in the world.
Spain's GDP (gross domestic product) has recently surpassed Canada's to total over 1 trillion euros ($1.3 trillion).
Moreover, per capita income figures indicate an obvious increase in Spanish living standards as economic growth continues steadily. Spain has leapt from its previous 32nd position in the world economy to its current 24th place. Based on purchasing power parity, a Spaniard earns an annual average of $29,000.
Due to migration and structural change, the development of the job industry has proved crucial in the past two dec-ades.
National employment now stands at 20 million people, with the unemployment rate having dropped to 8.5 percent.
From 2000 to 2006, more than 4 million people have migrated to Spain, resulting in a change of status from a country with outflow of in-habitants to one in which there is constant inflow of immigrants.
Without the economic re-forms of the past years, this would have been impossible. For one, the agriculture industry is becoming smaller as the service industry booms and Spain takes its place among the most developed countries in the world. Furthermore, a growing number of women have been joining the labor force and their rate of employment has reached 60 percent, twice the number 20 years ago.
In addition, if there had been no rise in the educational standard, this economic boom would have remained a distant dream. There is a significant difference in the educational standards of the past and present, with the younger generation receiving more education and being better read.
The substantial growth in the Spanish economy and the improvement in welfare are partly led by the country's opening up to the rest of the world, especially after it joined the European Union (EU).
Foreign trade volume - a criterion for measuring how open an economy is - makes up 68 percent of Spain's GDP, a marked increase from 38 percent in the early 1990s.
Besides the goods and ser-vice industries, Spain's capital sector - which includes Spanish investment in other parts of the world and foreign direct investment (FDI) in Spain - has reached international standards.
The influx of foreign capital has resulted in such investments constituting 30 percent of the GDP. This exceeds the savings rate by 800 percentage points, pulling Spain towards the standard in other developed European nations.
From 2000 to 2005, the annual average FDI in Spain was $3.1 billion, a jump from $1.2 billion in the 1990s.
The statistics for Spain's investment in other parts of the world is even more spectacular. Between 2000 and 2005, annual Spanish investment abroad was worth $4.2 billion, a threefold increase from $1.1 billion in the 1990s, marking Spain as truly a source of capital.
The amount of FDI in China in the early 1990s was $500 million, while it is now $6 billion, constituting 30 percent of the total FDI in the world, far more than that in Latin America.
Though Sino-Spanish partnership has made progress in the last few years, bilateral cooperation still has much untapped potential, especially in the export of Spanish goods and services to China.
Thus, forging deeper ties between the two countries should be given priority.
(China Daily 06/27/2007 page27)
