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PeakMetrics / Fact Checks

Economy & business fact checks

Explore claims publishers have checked about economy & business. Read their original ratings and follow the evidence.

7,104 published reviews in this topic

NewtralEconomy & business

Los bancos tienen que devolver los 60.000 millones que los ciudadanos les prestaron

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim was made by Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias during an RTVE election debate: banks, he said, should repay citizens €60 billion for the bailout. Newtral checked whether that sum represented public money owed to Spaniards, consulting the Bank of Spain’s report on the financial and banking crisis and its November 2018 update, based on data available through 31 December 2017. The review also says it checked the figures against the report and confirmed them with the Bank of Spain. The figures distinguish public funds from contributions by the banks themselves. Newtral reports that the Bank of Spain’s net balance for the public FROB was €42.017 billion, after accounting for money recovered from bank share sales, estimated recoveries from the sale of Bankia, and other adjustments. The private Deposit Guarantee Fund (FGDEC), funded by the banks, accounted for €22.332 billion. Together, those amounts total €64.349 billion, but that combined figure is not the amount of taxpayer money owed to the public. The review says the Bank of Spain told it that the FGDEC contained no taxpayer money. The review also addresses Iglesias’s claim that this equated to €1,300 per person. That calculation divides the combined €64.349 billion by Spain’s population, rather than using the public FROB amount. Using the latter, Newtral gives an approximate figure of €900 per inhabitant. It further reports that Podemos said its estimate included €10 billion in interest on public debt, based on the party’s own calculations, and did not account for the estimated recovery from the sale of the state’s Bankia stake.

NewtralEconomy & business

Hemos reducido la brecha salarial un 4,5%

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim concerns a statement by Pablo Casado that the People’s Party (PP) had reduced the wage gap by 4.5%. Newtral’s account identifies that statement as having been made during an election debate on RTVE, which it says took place the day before its live fact-checking coverage. That coverage followed statements by four candidates for the presidency of the government and was organized into four subject blocks, including social policy and equality. Newtral directly labels Casado’s wage-gap statement false. It adds that the figure was not 5% either, so the excerpt rejects both the 4.5% figure in the claim and that alternative figure. However, this excerpt does not provide the calculations, data, or comparison period behind that conclusion. It says the earlier explanation was published when Casado first made the claim, but that underlying explanation is not included here. The available evidence therefore establishes what Casado claimed, the setting in which Newtral checked it, and Newtral’s stated conclusion, but does not show the detailed evidentiary basis for that conclusion.

NewtralEconomy & business

Los bancos tienen que devolver los 60.000 millones que los ciudadanos les prestaron

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim concerned €60 billion that banks supposedly had to return to citizens because of the bank rescue. Newtral’s review attributes that statement to Pablo Iglesias and reports that, according to the Bank of Spain, the amount of public money still outstanding was €42 billion—not €60 billion. The excerpt does not provide further details about the Bank of Spain’s calculation or explain the difference between the figures.

NewtralEconomy & business

Desde que gobierna Sánchez hay 21.000 autónomos menos

Publisher’s rating: Falso

The claim was made by PP leader Pablo Casado, who argued that there were 21,000 fewer self-employed workers since Pedro Sánchez became prime minister. The review compares the number of self-employed people affiliated with Social Security at the end of May 2018, just before Sánchez took office, with the latest figure available to it: the end of March 2019. It identifies the source of the figures as the Ministry of Employment’s statistical data on self-employment affiliation. That comparison gives 3,261,398 affiliated self-employed workers on 31 May 2018 and 3,254,078 on 31 March 2019—a decrease of 7,320, not 21,000. The review says the 21,000 figure did match the February 2019 count: 3,239,653, or about 21,000 fewer than in May 2018. It therefore treats Casado’s figure as out of date by the time of the review. The review also cautions that affiliation figures should be compared across the same time of year because employment varies from month to month. Its stated conclusion is that the 21,000 figure was false as a description of the latest available comparison, while acknowledging that it matched the earlier February figure.

FACTLYEconomy & business

The Rs.500 note with green security thread closer to Mahatma Gandhi picture is a fake note

Publisher’s rating: FALSE

The claim concerned two variants of India’s Rs.500 note: it alleged that a note with the green security thread closer to Mahatma Gandhi was counterfeit and that only a note with the thread near the RBI Governor’s signature should be accepted. FACTLY’s review says the pictured variants are both acceptable, and attributes their difference to a printing defect rather than a sign that one is fake. The review describes the claim as arising from a Facebook post, but the supplied excerpt does not reproduce the post’s image or provide further details about its origin. [S1] To support its conclusion, FACTLY reports that it searched Google for “Rs.500 fake note” and found news articles from 2016 about the issue. It cites a Business Insider article reporting that RBI spokesperson Alpana Killawala said notes with a printing defect may have been released “due to the current rush,” and that people could accept such notes in transactions or return them to the RBI. This reported clarification addresses the specific alleged difference in thread placement: the review presents it as a printing variation, not grounds to reject the note as fake. [S1] The supplied review excerpt summarizes the search and the spokesperson’s reported statement, but does not include the underlying Business Insider article, an RBI document, or details of a separate examination of the notes. Accordingly, the evidence available here supports the review’s account of the clarification and its conclusion about both variants; it does not independently document how the notes were examined or how widely the variation occurred. [S1]

FACTLYEconomy & business

MUDRA: More than 70% of the beneficiaries are women

Publisher’s rating: TRUE

FACTLY’s review assesses the claim using figures from the PMMY website’s year-wise performance reports. It reports 12.27 crore MUDRA loan accounts in total for 2015–16 through 2017–18, of which 9.03 crore belonged to women entrepreneurs. That makes women’s share about 74%, above the claim’s 70% threshold. The figures support the claim as the review presents it, but the measure is loan accounts, not a count of distinct individual women. The article describes the 9.03 crore figure as accounts belonging to women entrepreneurs; it does not establish from the excerpt whether a person with multiple loans could be counted more than once. Its conclusion therefore rests on the reported account figures, rather than a demonstrated tally of unique beneficiaries.

FACTLYEconomy & business

9 crore women have benefitted jointly from MUDRA and Stand up India

Publisher’s rating: TRUE

The claim concerns the combined number of women who benefited from MUDRA and Stand Up India. FACTLY examined figures from the PMMY website’s year-wise performance reports and the Stand Up India mission’s 2017–18 annual report. It reports that 9.03 crore MUDRA accounts belonged to women and that 41,639 women benefited under Stand Up India. Adding the Stand Up India figure to the MUDRA figure gives slightly more than 9 crore, which is the basis for the review’s conclusion. FACTLY states: “This means that a total of more than 9 crore women have benefitted from both the schemes.” It therefore rates the claim TRUE. The figures are not presented in exactly the same terms: the MUDRA figure is described as women’s loan accounts, while the Stand Up India figure is described as women who benefited. The excerpt does not establish whether MUDRA accounts correspond one-to-one with unique women, so the combined total should be understood as the review’s comparison of the reported scheme figures, not as independently demonstrated unique-person counts.