Summary Ministers forecast jobless rate would dip under 26% and economic growth would reach 0.7% in 2014.
MADRID (AFP) - Spain s government approved further unpopular austerity measures for pensioners and public workers in its 2014 budget on Friday but insisted the outlook for jobs and economic growth was getting brighter.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy s government said it will stop pensions rising in line with inflation and freeze public sector workers salaries for a fourth year, but sees the spending plan as the first "budget of the recovery".
It shifted the focus of the announcement onto the changing economic outlook, saying Spain, the eurozone s fourth-biggest economy, is heading out of the five-year crisis that has thrown millions of Spaniards into hardship.
"It is a responsible and realistic budget, which seeks a balance between necessary austerity and support for the recovery," Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria told a news conference.
One of Spain s biggest labour unions, the UGT, blasted the budget, however, saying in a statement that it "dodges the problem of unemployment and consolidates the cuts".
The pensions reform "will impoverish citizens still further and continue to weaken the welfare state", it said.
Ministers forecast the jobless rate would dip under 26 percent and economic growth would reach 0.7 percent in 2014. They said the economy would start creating jobs again in the second half of that year.
After a two-year recession, the second downturn following the collapse of a building boom in 2008, the government now forecasts Spain will return to growth of between 0.1 and 0.2 percent in the current quarter. "This is the budget of the economic recovery," said Budget Minister Cristobal Montoro.
More cautious, Finance Minister Luis de Guindos said the figures reflected "a recovery that is very weak and still fragile, but it is there".
The government forecast the economy will shrink by 1.3 percent this year. National statistics show it has shrunk 5.4 percent since 2008.
