Household and non-financial corporate accounts for 2022
Fecha: mayo 2023
María Jesús Fernández
Non-financial accounts
SEFO, Spanish and International Economic & Financial Outlook, V. 12 N.º 3 (May 2023)
The pandemic has had a relatively limited impact on the aggregate level of household finances in Spain with the sector’s GDI recovering to 2019 levels by 2021. The household sector also set aside a significant savings buffer, which following official statistics revisions, turned out to be even higher than initially estimated at 137 billion versus 94 billion euros. In the case of the corporate sector, revised figures show that the negative impact of the pandemic on corporate income was actually stronger than originally anticipated. Indeed, between 2020 and 2021, the non-financial corporations generated a net lending position of 12.2 billion euros, instead of the initially reported surplus of close to 78 billion euros. As a result, the original conclusion drawn that the household sector’s accounts had held up remarkably well in 2020-2021, in contrast to the impairment sustained by the business sector, not only remains valid, but rather the contrast between the two sectors’ performances is starker than originally thought. In 2022, however, the corporate sector’s finances fared better than those of the household sector, fully recovering
from the hit taken in 2020. Nevertheless, corporate profits (after tax) have increased by less compared to pre-pandemic levels than household income (+1.4% vs. +4.7%), partly due to lower growth in their pre-tax income and partly due to the relatively bigger increase in the effective tax rate sustained by the corporate sector- a major topic of debate at present.