Spanish machine tool industry: gratifying growth in orders

Spain's main economic indicators show that the downward trend of the Spanish economy has slowed down. In 2013, the economic growth rate was -1.3%. The driving force for the growth comes from the manufacturing industry, especially the main user fields of the machine tool industry, such as auto parts, energy (wind power, hydraulics, photovoltaics, oil), aviation, railways and other fields. It is expected that the growth rate of these user fields will reach 4.2%, which is 6 times the average growth rate of the Spanish industry, thus driving the rapid growth of machine tool orders. Spanish machine tool consumption has experienced 10 years of negative growth, with a year-on-year increase of 4.5% in 2013, which may be a turning point from negative to positive. But it must also be seen that the high unemployment rate in Spain and the problem of monetary tightening may inhibit the growth of machine tool consumption.