Two south coast resorts are joining the eurozone to cash in on the boom of more British and foreign visitors this summer.

Tourism bosses believe that the stay-at-home Brits who normally travel abroad will have spare euros tucked away from previous holidays that they won’t be using this year.

And rather than it going to waste, they can spend it in hotels, restaurants and tourist attractions in Bournemouth and Poole in Dorset.

The Spanish government announced Sunday it will provide EUR 3.0 billion (USD 3.9 billion) in contract guarantees to small- and medium-sized businesses in a new bid to combat the economic crisis.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said the state credit agency Instituto Credito Oficial would issue the guarantees to cover services to local authorities throughout the country.

The Spanish government has made EUR 100.7 million (USD 515 million) available to SEAT in a bid to persuade parent company Volkswagen to build a new Audi model in Spain, reports said Saturday.

The aid is part of an EUR 800 million package put together by the industry ministry in a bid to improve the competitiveness of the Spanish automobile sector which has been hard hit by the economic crisis.

There are now signs the recession-imposed chokehold on the world economy could be starting to ease as multi-billion-dollar government stimulus measures bear fruit, according to heavily qualified assessments from a growing number of analysts.

While no one is prepared to say the cloud is actually lifting, many commentators and government economists contend that the pace of the worldwide slide is slowing and that a rebound is possible next year.

A total of 24,300 loans for house purchase were advanced during the month, up from 23,400 in January, the Council of Mortgage Lenders said.

But it warned that activity still remained very weak by historical standards, with mortgages taken out by people buying a home running at only around a third of the average total for February of 76,000 seen between 2002 and 2007.

A Spanish journalists’ association Monday called for financial help for the country’s press industry, where thousands have been laid off amid the economic crisis.

Between June 2008 and this month, 2,221 Spanish journalists have lost their jobs, the Federation of Journalist Associations in Spain (FAPE) said.

It backed an appeal to the European Union by the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) to release funds to help the sector.

Spain’s new finance minister, Elena Salgado, appealed to banks on Wednesday to help businesses and families cope with the economic crisis.

Banks “must contribute strongly, but also rapidly to help overcome the problems that families are having, the self-employed, the small and medium-sized businesses” by providing loans, Elena Salgado said on her first full day in office on Wednesday.

Salgado replaced former EU economic commissioner Pedro Solbes as finance minister in a cabinet reshuffle announced on Tuesday by Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero.

The Irish Republic has had debt ratings on all its banks cut by Moody’s, a day after revealing its emergency budget.

Finance Minister Brian Lenihan unveiled on Tuesday his decision to buy toxic debt from banks at a discount in exchange for government debt.

But the plan did not placate the ratings agency, who said it downgraded the 12 banks because the worsening economy would hurt bank profits anyway.

The Irish Republic’s government is to unveil its second budget in six months as the economy contracts sharply.

Dublin faces the double challenge of dealing with a deepening recession while being forced to correct the worst deficit in Europe.

Unemployment is tipped to near 12% in 2009 and based on government forecasts the deficit could reach four times the level allowed by the European Union.

The Irish emergency budget is likely to mean higher taxes and lower spending.

Research by the online comparison websites Cheapflights and Trivago has found that room rates have been cut by up to a quarter in the past six months in an attempt to encourage Britons to take more short breaks on the Continent.

The weakness of sterling against the euro has seen holidaymakers’ pounds fall by up to 20 per cent in value in the Eurozone and prompted tourists to look at destinations not aligned to the euro, such as Turkey and Egypt.

The government of Spain is preparing a new public fund aimed at restructuring the nation’s banks, daily business newspaper Cinco Dias reported Thursday.

The fund is aimed at the nation’s troubled regional savings banks and the idea for it was put forward by the Bank of Spain, which on Sunday came to the aid of regional savings bank Caja Castilla La Mancha (CCM), it said.

The Bank of Spain has predicted that the country’s rate of unemployment will reach 17.1% in 2009 and 19.4% in 2010.

Spain has the highest unemployment rate in the European Union, with a rate of 15.5% in February, nearly double the EU average, according to Eurostat.

The Bank of Spain is also predicting that the public deficit will hit 8.3% this year and 8.7% in 2010, which is well over the eurozone limit of 3%.

The number of unemployed in Spain registered the weakest gain in six months in March compared to February, but the overall jobless total rose to 3.6 million, the highest since 1996, the labour ministry said Thursday.

By the end of March there were 3,605,402 unemployed workers in Spain, up 3.5 percent or 123,543 from the previous month and the highest number since 1996 when the current method of calculation was introduced, the ministry said in a statement.

Spain may have to rescue more financial institutions if the global crisis drags on, the central bank’s governor said Tuesday, two days after the country’s first bailout since the crisis began.

“If the international crisis is prolonged, it almost certainly will be necessary to restructure some small and medium sized institutions,” Bank of Spain governor Miguel Angel Fernandez Ordonez said at a conference.

“We should prepare ourselves to use more public resources than on previous occasions,” he said.

Germany’s unemployment rate rose to 8.6% in March as the global economic downturn continued to tighten its grip on Europe’s largest economy.

The rate rose slightly from 8.5% in February, on an unadjusted basis.

In seasonally adjusted terms, the rate rose to 8.1% from 8%, official figures also showed. This equates to 3.4 million people, an increase of 69,000.

Unemployment rates have been rising across Europe, with the Spanish jobless rate the highest at more than 14%.

Spain’s central bank took over a struggling savings bank on Sunday and was prepared to pour in emergency cash, its first rescue in the financial crisis.

The central bank said in a statement that it placed the Caja de Ahorros Castilla La Mancha (CCM) under special administration, and the government met to discuss a cash injection of up to EUR 9 billion.

Spanish inflation declined by 0.1 percent in March over 12 months, national statistics institute INE said Monday, the first annual decline in prices since it started tracking inflation in 1961.

Spanish consumer prices rose by 0.7 percent in February on an annual basis.
Following this preliminary data, the statistics office will publish final inflation figures for the month on 15 April.

Spain’s central bank will take over failing savings bank Caja de Ahorros Castilla La Mancha in its first such rescue move, according to a government source.

The bank has reportedly agreed to “replace the board of Caja de Ahorros Castilla La Mancha and to inject money into this entity.”

The two banks have made no comment.

“The government is facing its most difficult moment since coming to power in 2004,” sociologist Fermin Bouza, a specialist in public opinion at Madrid’s Complutense University, told AFP.

The right-wing opposition has accused the Socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero of failing to prevent Spain’s first recession in over a decade, which has left the country with Europe’s highest unemployment rate.

The government had long predicted a slowdown but no contraction in the economy.

Some 1,000 workers from small- and medium-sized businesses protested outside Spain’s parliament on Thursday to demand the government change its policies to tackle the economic crisis.

The crowd called on Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero to resign, shouting “Spain deserves another prime minister”.

“This government ignores the small- and medium-sized companies and the independents,” said Javier Parera, 54, who founded a chain of bakeries in the northeast city of Barcelona.