The survey, conducted among 14,800 investors from over twenty different countries, specifically places the Spanish as the third least optimistic over their investments in 2013, just ahead of the Italians and Portuguese.

Likewise, Spanish investors were listed second, for the group who showed least trust in their own country as a source of growth for their investments, with only 31% expressing their confidence, against the global average of 50%.

When questioned about their main concerns, the Spanish indicated the debt crisis in the Eurozone (49%), ahead of political instability and uncertainty about the direction of government policies (47%), and tax increases (43%).

Overall, El Economista reported that the results of the study indicate the recovery of investor confidence, since 48% of those surveyed expressed greater confidence in 2013 than in the previous year, although there are important differences between countries.

By region, the confidence of European investors in their investment opportunities is below the global average and stands at 39%, compared with U.S. and Asian investors with 59%.

By country, the Japanese investors are those who have the most confidence in their investments, with 84%, followed by Indonesians and Thais, while the most optimistic investors in Europe are those from Sweden, Switzerland and Germany.

Furthermore, when asked about the regions offering the greatest growth potential for their investments in 2013, the Asia Pacific region, including China, dominated the choice for global investors (46%), second only to the investors who chose their own country.

For the Spanish investors, the regions offering the greatest potential were Asia Pacific (44%), Latin America (36%) and Spain (31%).

During the meeting in the Russian capital, the most senior members of the tax authorities represented in the FTA (including the Director of the Spanish Tax Office – AEAT, Beatriz Viana) identified a series of “specific synergies” that they “will fully exploit” in order to combat tax fraud and tax evasion through close collaboration between the various tax authorities. That same degree of collaboration will also be applied to their efforts against tax havens, information on international financial transfers, investigation of banking operations and identification of beneficiaries from complex structures.

The Member States of the FTA stressed in a statement made public in Moscow on Friday that they “want greater transparency and increased information exchange”, and they expressly applauded the recent call of the G-20, at its meeting in Washington last month, in favour of a new international transparency standard based on the automatic exchange of information.

“We are united in our decision to combat international tax fraud, tax evasion and aggressive fiscal planning”, stated the FTA, and also welcomed the work begun by the OECD on the erosion of tax bases and the shifting of profits (the BEPS Project), saying that the Member States are committed to “being ready” to swiftly apply any improvement in terms of aggressive planning models that the BEPS Project may offer in the future.

The Forum on Tax Administration (FTA) is a body of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) consisting of 45 countries (the 34 members of the OECD, including Spain; six “participating” countries; and five “observer” countries), which was set up in 2002 to promote dialogue between tax authorities and to identify best practices. Basically, there are two streams to the work of the FTA, each focusing on key tax compliance and taxpayer services issues – one in relation to business and individuals with global interests and cross-border tax issues, and the other largely in relation to the SME sector.

In contrast, traditional airline companies carried 7.8 million passengers in the first four months of the year, which is 5.8% less than in the same period of 2012.

These figures indicate that, between January and April 2013, the low cost airlines accounted for more than half of the air traffic, with 51%, compared to the traditional airlines, who carried 49% of travellers.

The UK and Germany were the main markets choosing to travel with the low cost airlines, with 30.7% and 18.6% of passengers, respectively, with the British market remaining basically stable, with 2.5 million passengers, and the number of German passengers rising by 7.6% (to 1.5 million).

Arrivals from Italy, the third source market, dropped by 18% to 861,924 travellers, representing 10.6% of the total arrivals by low cost airlines. France was next, with 7.4% of the total arrivals and 603,018 passengers, which is 0.8% more than last year.

Following France is the Netherlands, with a drop of 3.6% in arrivals, and a total of 468,435 passengers, representing 5.7% of the total.

The largest percentage increase was in Denmark, with 60.4% more arrivals so far this year representing a total of 178,197 passengers. In addition, the number of arrivals from Norway increased by 34.2% to 234,034 visitors.

In the first four months of the year, Catalonia, the Canary Islands and Andalusia received most of the arrivals via low cost airlines. Catalonia was first in the ranking, with 26.4% of arrivals and more than 2.1 million passengers, following an unprecedented increase of 2.4%. The Canary Islands were next, with 17.7%, and 1.4 million visitors, then Andalusia, with 1.1 million arrivals, recording an increase of 5.8%.

They were followed by Valencia, with 1.1 million passengers (+4.6%); the Balearic Islands, with a little more than a million passengers (+8.8%), and then Madrid, with 906,326 passengers (-19%).

So far this year, the Spanish airports most used by low cost airlines were Barcelona-El Prat, with 1.82 million travellers and an increase of 1.6%; Palma de Mallorca, with 972,439 passengers and a rise of 8.9%, and Malaga, with 948,348 passengers, up 9.1%.

Madrid-Barajas came next, receiving 906,326 travellers, which was a decrease of 19%, and Alicante, which experienced an increase of 8.6%, with 832,338 passengers. Tenerife-South followed, with an increase of 3.9%, to 597,712 passengers.

Closing the first four months in negative figures were the airports of Gran Canaria, with 368,369 travellers (-0.6%), Valencia, with 291,023 passengers (-5.4%) and Girona-Costa Brava, with a decrease of 0.4%, to 269,176 passengers.

In April, the low cost airlines carried 2.8 million passengers, which is an increase of 1.2%, while the traditional airlines carried 2.1 million passengers, representing a drop of 8.1% compared to the same month of 2012.

According to El Mundo, last month, the occupancy rate of low cost airlines’ flights reached 78%, similar to April 2012, while that of the traditional airlines dropped by two percentage points (75.9%).

Ryanair, easyJet and Vueling were the main ‘low cost’ airlines in the fourth month of 2013, together transporting 64.8% of all travellers who opted for the low cost carriers. Both the Irish and the Catalan companies, especially the Catalan, increased their figures from a year ago.

In April, the UK, Germany and Italy remained the main sources of low cost passengers, together accounting for 60.6% of the total.

According to data from the EU statistical office, Eurostat, year-on-year, the contraction is 1%.

In all the 27 countries of the European Union, the recession also slowed to 0.1%, compared with a drop in GDP in the last quarter of 2012 of 0.5%. In annual terms, the fall is 0.7%.

Among the countries for which data are available, the biggest declines were noted for Cyprus (-1.3%), Estonia (-1%), the Czech Republic (-0.8%), Spain and Italy (both with -0.5%), Portugal (-0.3%) and France (-0.2%).

Only Lithuania (+1.3%), Latvia (+1.2%) and Hungary (+0.7%) managed to achieve a certain amount of increase in activity, while Germany (+0.1%) and the UK (+0.3%) narrowly avoided relapsing into recession.

El Mundo reported that, according to Eurostat, a total of 7 of the 17 member states of the eurozone are in recession: Spain, France, Italy, Cyprus, the Netherlands, Portugal and Finland. Slovenia, whose latest data is not available, will most probably join this group.

In 2010, the U.S. Government promoted a series of rules through this legislation whereby financial entities around the world are required to report on accounts held overseas by U.S. taxpayers. Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, France and Italy established a common negotiating position with the United States and, in mid-2012, reached an inter-governmental agreement model that has provided the basis for bilateral agreements between the five countries and the United States.

The agreement between Spain and the United States was approved at the end of 2012 and was waiting to be signed.

To comply with this agreement, the financial institutions in Spain and the United States must provide their corresponding tax authorities with information relating to taxpayers of the other signatory country and, subsequently, this information will be automatically exchanged between the tax authorities through a standardised procedure.

The agreement constitutes a milestone in the exchange of tax information at an international level, by laying the foundations for a new, automatic, recurrent and standardised framework of international information exchange.

Efforts by tax authorities in both countries is important for increasing international pressure on tax havens through a network of agreements on the exchange of information, and in line with international efforts being made with the other OECD countries.

Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Italy all want the model agreed with the United States to be adopted multilaterally by a majority of countries in order to thus strengthen efforts against tax fraud and tax havens.

To that end, the ministers sent a letter to the European Commissioner for Taxation and Customs Union, Audit and Anti-fraud, Algirdas Šemeta, in which they announced a decision to work together on a pilot scheme for the multilateral exchange of tax information between the five countries based on the FATCA model, having invited the other Member States of the EU to participate. The launch of such an initiative, which was a topic of discussion at the ECOFIN Council held on Tuesday, will enable Europe and the United States to head up the promotion of a global system of automatic information exchange.

In the first quarter of 2008, when the Spanish economy was still growing and unemployment did not exceed 10%, tourism in Spain provided jobs to 2,533,080 people, which is 611,441 more than between January and March this year, when the number of people employed in this sector amounted to 1,921,639.

As for the unemployed, in these five years the numbers have more than doubled, from 242,229 to 523,364 people, while the unemployment rate has soared from 8.7% to 21.4%, according to data from the Labour Force Survey published by the Institute of Tourism Studies.

According to ABC News, the regions where most jobs have been lost in the last five years are: Andalusia (where the number of people employed has dropped from 408,175 to 288,017), Catalonia (from 423,804 to 310,089 employed), Valencia (from 288,420 to 181,169) and Madrid (from 403,610 to 312,454).

By contrast, in the Canary Islands 5,742 new jobs have been created, and in the Balearic Islands the number of employed has remained reasonably stable, standing at 87,982 in the first quarter of 2008, and 85,307 in the first quarter of 2013.

According to data released on Friday by Aena, Madrid’s Barajas airport is one of the hardest hit by the loss of passengers, with a total of 11,967,642 customers recorded up to the end of April, which is a decrease of 14.8% year-on-year.

El Mundo reported that passenger numbers fell by more than 10% in 27 of the 47 airports, and only three registered an increase.

With a total of 14,864,046 passengers, April recorded a 7.7% drop in traffic. However, it should be noted that this year Semana Santa (the Easter Holy Week) fell in March, while in 2012 it took place in April.

Among the ten busiest airports, only Alicante increased its passengers, registering 2,324,716 passengers, up 3.2%. As well as Barajas, among those airports which suffered a drop in their passenger numbers were: Barcelona with 9,418,225 passengers, down 4.5%; Palma de Mallorca with 3,831,008 passengers, down 2.7%; Gran Canaria, 3,410,674, down 6.2%, Tenerife-Sur, 3,091,709, down 1.9%; Málaga, 3,065,573, down 2.4%; Lanzarote, 1,617,063, 4.5% less; Fuerteventura, 1,330,204, down 12.5% and Valencia with 1,299,325 passengers, representing a drop of 5.7%.

As the Official State Bulletin (BOE) reported yesterday, the price per kilogram of butane (bottled LPG) is to rise to 1.142025 euros.

Thus, a 12.5 kg cylinder will cost 14.27 euros before taxes. Once the VAT (21%) is added, the price is 17.26 euros. Added to this is the new tax approved by the Government, which was set at 15 euros per ton of butane, bringing the final price per gas cylinder to 17.49 euros.

The Bulletin issued on Monday states that this new price will take effect the day following its publication, i.e. from this morning, and will be in force until the next review, in two months’ time, with any change in price being applied from the second Tuesday of the month, which will be 9th July.

In the previous review, butane prices rose by 5% for its eight million users in Spain.

In the first three months of the year, the airline reduced its operating losses from 26.8 million euros to 25.9 million euros and the EBITDAR (earnings before leasing costs, amortization, interest and taxes) stood at 7.4 million euros compared to -1.3 million euros in the same period last year.

The company earned revenues of 192.5 million euros between January and March of this year, 14.3% more than in the first quarter of 2012, due to the improvement in unitary revenue.

The company stressed that its total costs had increased by 11.9% year-on-year, and fuel costs had risen by 11.8%, in line with the increase in activity.

On 23rd April, the shareholders of Vueling accepted IAG’s bid for the company, which paid 9.25 euros per share, for a total of 13.35 million shares. Thus, the holding company which controls Iberia now also controls over 90% of the low cost Catalan airline.

In addition to information about their results, El Economista reported that Vueling released their passenger traffic data for the month of April. The company carried 1.35 million passengers, which is an increase of 13.2% compared to a year earlier, with a 74.2% occupancy rate, representing a drop of 2.6 percentage points.

During the fourth month of the year, the airline, managed by Josep Piqué, operated 18.1% more flights, a total of 10,468 operations, compared with the 8,861 flights operated the previous year.

Also during the month of April, Vueling announced the start of its summer season, in which they are to operate flights to 103 destinations, including a new route linking Barcelona with Beirut, the capital of Lebanon.

The biggest increase corresponded to citizens of the European Union (EU), with a total of 96,000 more arrivals than in 2011, which represents an annual increase of 18% and puts the number of foreigners coming from this area at 638,000.

Especially notable was the number of citizens coming from the countries most affected by the crisis, such as Spain, which showed an increase of 45% and a total of 29,910 people, which represents 9,238 more people than the 20,672 who emigrated to Germany in 2011.

The number of citizens arriving from Portugal reached 4,000, while arrivals from Greece and Italy amounted to 10,000 and 12,000 respectively, which is around 40% more than the previous year.

Cinco Dias reported that the second group Destatis highlighted in their report, corresponds to people originating from countries recently incorporated into the EU, such as Slovenia, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

127,000 people emigrated to Germany from European countries not members of the EU – an increase of 14% – while 195,000 people arrived from countries in the rest of the world – an increase of 7.6%.

The majority of these foreigners arriving in Germany headed for the most industrialised “Länders” (federal states) in the country, with Bavaria in the lead, followed by North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg and Hesse.