The head of the OECD said today that it is 'inaccurate' and 'unfair' to compare the debt problems of Spain with Portugal, after Lisbon announced that it needed a European financial bail out.
'Spain will not have the same problems Portugal is facing,' Angel Gurria said in Budapest, where European Union finance ministers are gathering as Lisbon prepares to lodge a formal demand for aid.
Gurria said Madrid had been addressing its problems for some time and that they were 'never the same' as those in Lisbon. It was 'completely inaccurate, totally unfair' to lump Spain and other EU states with high debt levels, in alongside Portugal, Ireland and Greece, he said.
'Spain, Italy, the UK should never should have been talked about' in terms of needing a bail out, Gurria said. Talk of debt rescues 'should have stopped with Ireland' in December last year, he added.
Gurria noted in Budapest that there 'should not be a stigma' attached to calling for a bail-out, and blamed dysfunctional markets that were 'ill-informed' and 'rating agencies making things worse all the time'.
A series of downgrades of Portugal's credit-worthiness made Lisbon's latest foray onto money markets on Wednesday so costly its government decided it was better to turn to its euro currency partners, like Dublin and Athens before it.
Gurria, however, emphasised the positives. 'There is life after debt,' he said.
In Hungary, Finance Minister Michael Noonan had been due to brief his counterparts on the bank stress tests and to make a renewed push for a reduction in Ireland's interest rate.
But the informal meeting under the Hungarian presidency of the EU now looks certain to be dominated by the latest blow to the single currency.
