The consolidated debt of companies and households fell by 1.7% in the first to 1,648 million euros, according to the Financial Accounts of the Spanish Economy, published today by the Bank of Spain. The document shows that despite the fact that families and companies have been decreasing their assets in the first three months of the year as a result of the rise in interest rates by the European Central Bank (ECB), it is 2.3% higher to that reached at the end of 2019 before the pandemic.
In terms of GDP, the ratio also reflects a moderation of indebtedness of 121.1%, compared to the 135.3% reached up to March 2022, placing it below the 129.3% reached at the end of 2019. The Bank of Spain notes than the rate of reduction until March 2022 of the debts made with different intensity.
In this way, the consolidated debt of non-financial corporations fell from 972.3 billion in the first quarter of 2022 to 952.7 billion in March 2023. In terms of GDP, the ratio fell 8 percentage points from 78.5% to closing of the first quarter of 2022 to 70% at the beginning of 2023 22 to 694,900 million at the beginning of 2023, in absolute terms it represents a decrease of almost 9,000 million. The GDP ratio should reach 51.1% in the first quarter of 2023, from 56.8% a year earlier, just over 5 percentage points.
On the other hand, the import of the quarterly net operations accumulated in the last four years produced a negative figure of 14,100 million euros, which meant -1% in terms of GDP. Financial companies did not reduce their debt, in net terms, by 9.2 million due to net operations (0.7% of GDP), an amount that was affected by the fall in the prices of their issued fixed-income securities and other variations in volume, which began a decrease of 5.9 million euros as a whole. For their part, households and ISFLSH reduced their debt for net operations by a volume of 4,900 million euros (-0.4% of GDP).
Increases family wealth
The financial assets of households and ISFLSH reached a total import of 2.7 trillion euros at the end of the first quarter of 2023, 1.7% higher than that registered a year earlier. This increase reflected a positive revaluation of €15.3 billion, in addition to a net acquisition of financial assets, which was €31.9 billion in the last four quarters.
Within the net acquisitions, those of debt securities stood out, especially short-term, such as Treasury Bills, and investment fund shares, which were partially offset by the sale of company shares.
In relation to GDP, financial assets of households and ISFLSH represented 202% in the first quarter of 2023, 16.1 percentage points less than a year earlier, mainly due to the increase in GDP, and 5.7 points more than in December 2019 , before the pandemic period began. Regarding the distribution by components, the bulk of household financial assets were held in cash and deposits (38% of the total), followed by equity holdings (31%), investment fund holdings (15% ) and insurance and pension funds (12%).
