The amounts Spanish banks received from this facility has been decreasing over the past year, she added.
“I think this is going to continue while this facility continues. If not, they will have another means to finance,” Salgado said.
She is confident the recent stress tests imposed on the Spanish banks mean there are no nasty surprises sitting on balance sheets.
“We are confident on them because as you know we have gone through a big strong restructuring process, we have gone from forty-five savings banks to seventeen and of course we have gone through a stress test, very tough stress tests I have to say,” Salgado said.
In Spain, 95 percent of the financial system went to the stress tests carried out in Europe in July, while in other countries that percentage was just 50 percent, she added.
“Transparency is going to increase because at the end of this month all savings banks are going to say what assets they have,” Salgado said.
Rebalancing the Economy
Investors remain very worried about the high levels of unemployment in Spain and its impact on the mortgage market but Salgado dismisses those concerns.
“I think you have always to consider the level of our non-performing loans in Spain is very low. The mortgages are paid differently than in other countries, you respond not only with the house but with all the properties you have so this is one of the reasons of course that the level of non-performing loans is very low," she explained.
“So these are robust assets, the mortgages that the banks have in their balance sheets. But apart from that we think that the level of our private debt or better said the rapidity of the expansion of the credit in Spain has been too big so this is one of the imbalances that we are reducing now.”
Spain is reducing the three major imbalances it had: the weight of the real estate sector in the economy, the rapid expansion of credit in the private sector and the current account deficit, she said.