Spanish Economic Affairs Minister Nadia Calviño on Monday praised the European Central Bank’s recent measures to combat rising public debt yields, saying they were positive steps to avert downside risks. fragmentation in the eurozone.
In an emergency meeting last week, the European Central Bank decided to direct the reinvestment of bonds to help the southern countries of the bloc and devise a new instrument to contain the divergence in borrowing costs.
“It is very positive that the ECB has acted quickly and decisively to curb speculation, to avoid any fragmentation of the European debt markets,” Calviño said at a financial event, adding that the volatility observed in the last week in the debt markets do not clearly adjust to the fundamentals of the countries.
He stated that governments had to face scenarios of higher and longer inflation worldwide.
Calviño said that the Spanish Treasury had made good use of negative interest rates to prepare for the normalization of monetary policy, extending the average maturity of the debt to more than eight years.
The president of BBVA, Carlos Torres, declared at the same event in Santander that Spain is in a better position than before to weather the financial turbulence, since it now has fewer debt refinancing needs.
Spain has already covered almost 58% of its medium and long-term debt issuance plan for this year.