Business View

The OECD Secretary General Angel Gurria said today that aid will receive Spanish banks acceptable to the country since its public debt will remain below “the average for the OECD and the European average.”

Gurria said in an interview with Efe in Paris, gave good figure of 90,000 million mentioned in some media on the calculation that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released on Monday as the capital needs of Spanish banks.

“I do not want to be too original, let’s take those last figures that we need 90,000 million euros,” said Gurria.

And he said that this amount “Spain or banks could provide 50,000″ and that also could appeal to the European mechanisms.

He insisted that “this is not a catastrophe” because it represents “a few points of GDP” (gross domestic product) and although it added to the current volume of Spanish public debt, it will remain “below the average for the OECD and the European average “he said.

“This Spain can do is within their capabilities, it is in their numbers,” he said before explaining that the money I make now in nationalized banks, if then sold when conditions are more favorable, may be “benefits” as has happened in other countries.

While declining to set precise deadlines, the secretary general of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) highlighted the urgency to undertake this recapitalization, because the longer you wait, the more costs will be.

“Let’s settle the issue of banks, sooner or later have to capitalize the banks, so let’s do it earlier because time is not neutral,” he said.

“The more time passes, it makes us a more expensive bill” because “markets need more evidence to convince” and become “more severe and inflexible,” he argued.

To illustrate, said the cuts announced by the rating agency Fitch of the note to the Spanish sovereign debt, “That’s what happens because you let go of the time.”

To Gurría, the modus operandi involves “signs of how it will address the issue. And the details can be doing at the time, but once given the” since “what the market wants are messages, certainty. ”

Another reason for haste is that “markets are linking vulnerability” of the Spanish sovereign doubt “the solution” of bank recapitalization.

This problem “must be solved anyway” and “we will not save a penny of what to do” Please wait, so that “give the signal,” he reiterated.

Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation, Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo, today attributed the information pointing to a supposed rescue of Spain at an interest of speculators, who want to make money off of news that depress the value of Spanish bonds.

Garcia-Margallo was speaking to reporters after closing a conference on the “conspiracy of Munich”, which took place recently in the House of America, when asked about news reports that pointed in that direction.

He insisted that the government is not considering the hypothesis of a ransom, but focuses on assessing the needs of Spanish banks and for that, is awaiting the reports of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and independent appraisers.

Where available these reports and see what the funding requirements, see how to resolve the issue, emphasized Garcia Margallo, before noting that the government “never” talked about a bailout of the Spanish economy.

Asked about the European Union’s response to information pointing in that direction, the Minister has been adamant in stating that can not be denying any information that occurs at any time.

After stress that the government has said what their “road map”, said that the problem exists at the moment is that you clean up the financial sector and for this it is necessary, he has said, knowing the needs and then decide the formula and procedure used. “That we are,” he asserted.

Therefore, the foreign minister has made clear, at the insistence of journalists that the government is not going to deny any information that comes up.

Asked who might be interested in spreading this kind of information damaging to Spain, García-Margallo is clear: “People who expect to earn money in the markets based on news that depress the value of Spanish bonds.”

Speaking at the close of the conference, the minister has referred to the difficult economic situation affecting Spain and Europe, and has appealed to the spirit of solidarity that was forged in the “Munich conspiracy” to save the situation.

In this sense, a metaphor has been used today to explain the situation in Europe is like “the Titanic, if it sinks (..), sink also first-class passengers,” referring to countries like Germany or France.

It has therefore advocated that are bet more in Europe, with a union not only monetary but also political, and redefine a Europe that is in a situation of “life or death.”