Second, the legislative amendments must strike an appropriate balance between the rights of creditors and those of debtors, especially the socially excluded, and I should like to highlight the advisability of concentrating efforts in the field of social policies: a country as economically, socially and institutionally developed as Spain has sufficient resources to face up to and resolve the most dramatic and unacceptable situations of exclusion and need without affecting financial stability in the process. All these issues have been duly discussed in this Congress, which is why I shall focus on the situation of our banking system and on our economic outlook. BIS central bankers’ speeches  1  Role and situation of Spanish banks I should first like to highlight the crucial importance of banks in resource allocation and their role of intermediation between those supplying and demanding financing. Mass access to owner-occupied housing would be almost inconceivable without their intermediation. Mortgage lending is a very important segment of the financial intermediation in which credit institutions engage. As at December 2014, mortgage loans for house purchase extended by credit institutions to households amounted to slightly over € billion, more than 40% of total bank lending. The number of outstanding mortgage loans for house purchase is at present 5.8 million, a large percentage of which (82%) are at floating rates, which has allowed for the transmission of the Eurosystem’s more accommodative monetary policy to household financing conditions.
Our current forecast – which is scheduled for review in June, September and December – is for Spanish GDP to grow by 2.8% over the course of 2015, and by 2.7% in 2016. As to employment, the March figures reinforce our view that the unemployment rate should continue to fall, down to around 20% of the labour force by the fourth quarter of 2016. In Europe, the figures appear to support the view that the risks of deflation have been averted and that the economies of the Monetary Union and of the European Union as a whole are recovering and gaining momentum. If the Spanish economy is to benefit from these changes and likewise enjoy sustained higher growth, it will be essential to persevere with the reforms geared to adding market flexibility and boosting investment. Admittedly, however, the European and international financial context is unprecedented. The US exit from quantitative easing, with the interest rate rises that the markets expect, and the proliferation of negative interest rates on various financial and government debt markets, make for an unprecedented scenario that poses undoubted risks to financial stability with potentially highly volatile movements in financial asset prices. But if the risk of deflation in the euro area has finally been averted, and the US economic recovery continues apace, we may expect the financial markets to return to normal and yield curves to move back in step with normal, sustained economic growth. 4  BIS central bankers’ speeches