Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy today said the economy would grow 2.9% this year and next, creating 500,000 jobs.
The Prime Minister Rajoy is betting on an accelerating economic recovery to win a second term this year in an election seen as the most uncertain in more than 30 years as the rise of new parties shakes up Spain's political order.
The government will send its three-year economic plan, including updated forecasts, to the European Union at the end of the week, while the National Statistics Institute will report preliminary growth figures for the first quarter on Thursday.
"The Spanish economy will grow 2.9% in 2015, and around the same rate next year," Rajoy told an audience of business executives and journalists at an event in Madrid.
The previous forecast was for 2% growth seen last September and a 2.4% expansion predicted in February.
Low oil prices, European Central Bank monetary expansion and a gradual pick up in domestic consumer spending are largely behind the economic pick-up.
Yet, with about one in four people out of work, salaries still pressured downward and inequalities rising more than anywhere else in Western Europe, Rajoy's People's Party is finding it hard to convince voters.
The Prime Minister also cautioned that Spain's economic recovery is being threatened by political instability and the crisis in debt-plagued Greece.
"At the moment, I see as enemies of Spain's recovery the political instability - it's a possible enemy of the recovery - and then Greece," Rajoy told a press conference in Madrid.
Rajoy has accused the government in Athens of taking the country down the wrong path.
"Things weren't going badly (in Greece). Then the government changed. The new government decided to say that it accepted none of what the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund said," he said.
"But these three are its creditors and if it doesn't accept (their terms) it risks having its funding cut," Rajoy added.
Linking the situation in Greece with that in Spain, which was also battered by the euro zone debt crisis and which is gearing up for a general election expected at the end of the year, he said: "Spain is the first to want things to go well for Greece."
His remarks came as Greece prepared to resume negotiations today on a deal needed to unlock €7.2 billion in remaining EU-International Monetary Fund bailout money, according to a Greek government source.
