Spanish Service Sector Gathering Steam

The data coming out of Spain continues to be very impressive.

While other Eurozone countries continue to struggle (France and Italy come to mind quickly on that) Spain has been taking off.

The latest service-sector PMI report, which came out this morning, corroborates this.

The Spanish service sector made a positive start to 2014 as both activity and new orders continued to expand solidly. Moreover, employment stabilised, ending a sequence of job shedding which stretched back to March 2008. However, companies still discounted output prices sharply, while input costs rose following no change in December. The headline seasonally adjusted Business Activity Index rose to 54.9 in January from 54.2 in December, signalling a third successive monthly increase in activity in the sector. Furthermore, the solid expansion was the sharpest since July 2007. A number of respondents indicated that improving economic conditions had supported rises in business activity.

Here's the key chart: