STORY: Spanish economist warns of Eurozone's sluggish economy in 2024 
SHOOTING TIME: Dec. 20, 2023
DATELINE: Dec. 21, 2023
LENGTH: 00:02:05
LOCATION: BARCELONA, Spain
CATEGORY: ECONOMY

SHOTLIST:
1. SOUNDBITE 1 (Catalan): SERGI BASCO, Associate professor of economics at Barcelona University
2. SOUNDBITE 2 (Catalan): SERGI BASCO, Associate professor of economics at Barcelona University
3. various of street views of Spain

STORYLINE:

A Barcelona-based Spanish economist has recently warned that the Eurozone will see sluggish economic growth in 2024 as the continuing efforts to curb inflation may lead to unemployment.

SOUNDBITE 1 (Catalan): SERGI BASCO, Associate professor of economics at Barcelona University
"The European authorities are only concerned about inflation and in that sense, they're doing a good job because inflation is coming down, but the risk is that they overdo it and put interest rates up too much and we'll see an excessive slowdown in growth in 2024 and 2025"
The forecast for the Eurozone is that 2024 and 2025 will be better than 2023, however, the economic growth will be very slow, gentle, and limited.
The European authorities are working on lowering inflation without causing a rise in unemployment, but in history what has happened several times and what's more common is that putting up interest rates to lower inflation leads to unemployment."

Spain's economic momentum remains low, Basco observed, even though it has kept inflation down and weathered the surge in energy prices, due to weak domestic demand.

SOUNDBITE 2 (Catalan): SERGI BASCO, Associate professor of economics at Barcelona University
"Spain's economic growth is higher than the Eurozone average, but that's due to its specific factors. One is tourism, which was very intense and that has helped, and another is that Spain has not been affected by the high energy prices due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Inflation is lower in Spain than in other countries and this helps prevent consumption falling too much, and the other factor is tourism, which returned all at once after the pandemic and had a major effect initially, but tourism won't grow as much in the next few years.
The slowing of the Spanish economy in the final quarter of this year will continue into 2024, and one of the reasons is that internal demand cannot continue to go up as consumption is very much at its limit."

Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Barcelona, Spain.
(XHTV)