(MENAFN- AFP) Spain's economy is set to grow by nearly 1.0 percent in 2014, Economy Minister Luis de Guindos said on Tuesday as the euro nation's struggling recovery gains traction.The official government prediction for the year is 0.7 percent growth, following a contraction of 1.2 percent in 2013, according to estimates by the Bank of Spain."Growth in 2014 will be nearly 1.0 percent but the revision will be included in our stability programme when it is released before the end of April," de Guindos told reporters ahead of a meeting of EU finance ministers in Brussels."If it is true that the outlook for 2013 is better than initially believed, then logically the momentum with which we enter 2014 is bigger than we initially thought," de Guindos said.Spain, with the eurozone's fourth-biggest economy, has been struggling since 2008 when the collapse of a property bubble nearly brought down the banking system as the debt crisis bit.The subsequent recession has been deep and damaging, with the country hit by record high unemployment, still running at around 26 percent, and at one point looking as though it would need an international bailout.De Guindos said earlier on Tuesday that Spain's economy was improving because of "difficult decisions" taken by the conservative government."Two years ago we were on the verge of collapse but thanks to the difficult decisions taken ... the situation is totally different now," he said at the launch of a book on growth and jobs in Europe by the International Monetary Fund (IMF)."We are starting to see the results," he said.The government, which took power in December 2011, has enacted a series of reforms to ease business conditions, including making it easier to lay off staff.But the IMF has warned that Spain faces five more years with unemployment rates topping 25 percent unless it enacts yet more reforms including measures to help firms slash wages.
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