Spain's economy to grow by 2.7 pct in 2017: Spanish PM

The Spanish economy will grow by 2.7 percent this year, said Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Thursday at the closing ceremony of the General Assembly of Spain's employers' organization (CEOE).

Rajoy explained that the government would revise the country's economic predictions, which would be announced after the following week's cabinet meeting.

"We had predicted a 2.5 percent growth and we will revise it up to 2.7 percent,"Rajoy said.

"Recent data from the first quarter of the year along with other national and international forecasts encourage the government to revise up its forecast from 2.5 percent to 2.7 percent," he explained.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recently predicted a 2.6 percent growth for 2017 while national institutions such as Spain's second-biggest bank, BBVA, predicted a growth of 3 percent and the Bank of Spain forecast a 2.8 percent economic growth.

Rajoy said predictions were "realistic and cautious" and highlighted that economic growth would be positive if "we continue to do the right things", emphasizing that a total of 500,000 new jobs could be created, leading to the result of 20 million people working in Spain.

Rajoy defended that Spain could look at the future with optimism, pointing out that the current situation was very different from that a few years ago. Endit