Cebr Deputy Chairman, Douglas McWilliams has featured in the leading article of City A.M for his report on Catalonian independence.
“The scenes on TV over the weekend make Catalan independence highly likely, whether it is a good idea or not,” comments Douglas McWilliams from the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) this morning. McWilliams has crunched some numbers surrounding the potential economic consequences of a formal split. His calculations show the rest of Spain’s debt-to-GDP ratio jumping from 99.4 per cent to a somewhat alarming 116.4 per cent, if Catalonia is excluded from the equation. Under such a scenario the annual budget deficit climbs from an equivalent of 4.5 per cent of GDP, to 7.8 per cent. While such a scenario looks far healthier for Catalonia itself (which would run a substantial budget surplus), it “assumes a fairly peaceful separation, no attempt to punish Catalonia and no contagion effects on other regions in Spain or elsewhere,” the CEBR boss says. In reality, the situation “could be much worse”
Read the article on page 2 of the pdf found here.