Pablo Hernández de Cos: Presentation of Bank of Spain's Annual Report 2019

Parliamentary testimony by Mr Pablo Hernández de Cos, Governor of the Bank of Spain and Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, at the presentation of Bank of Spain's Annual Report 2019, Madrid, 6 October 2020.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen:

My appearance once more before this Committee is to present the Banco de España Annual Report 2019. It was approved by the Bank's Governing Council last June and published that same month. This year the Report has been dedicated to the impact of the pandemic on our country's economy, and to discussing what the role of economic policies should be to achieve our common priority objective: to minimise the impact of this grave crisis for our citizens' well-being. Along with summarising the content of the Annual Report, in my appearance I shall offer an update of the economic situation caused by the pandemic and, where appropriate, a review of some of the Report's messages. This is particularly appropriate in a setting like the present, which is rapidly changing and subject to high uncertainty.

1 The macroeconomic situation

In the strictly economic area, the health crisis and the measures needed to contain it have caused a deep recession worldwide, with a high degree of synchrony. The high mark for this recession was last spring.