Costa says that Portugal will enter 2023 less conditioned by the markets
The Prime Minister said today that Portugal will enter 2023 less financially acclimatized, despite the difficult international environment, and stressed that he does not want to repeat the high price that the country paid for having been exposed to the markets.
“I’ve already proved that I’m not tired”, declared António Costa at the end of the 23-minute speech he gave at the Christmas dinner of the PS Parliamentary Group, near Castelo de São Jorge, in Lisbon, before about a hundred deputy and more of a dozen members of his Government.
After speeches by the parliamentary leader of the PS, Eurico Brilhante Dias, and the president of the Assembly of the Republic, Augusto Santos Silva, António Costa chose as a central idea the question regarding the need for Portugal to lower the deficit and debt over the next few years, especially , now, in a context of high influence resulting from the effects of the war in Ukraine.
“We have to maintain this path, because we cannot eliminate the convergence factors. When the scenario is crossing, it becomes fundamental to maintain the certainties of public finances and the certainty of honoring the commitments assumed”, declared António Costa.
For António Costa, it is very important for Portugal to leave this year “with a better deficit and a debt lower than the best expectations”.
“It’s called coordinating with prudence. And we will be able to face next year’s reflection knowing that we will be less conditioned than we would be if this year had not controlled the deficit, or if this year the debt had continued to increase”, he said.
According to António Costa, if Portugal closes this year with a division in the product ratio already better than that of Spain and approaches France, then the country will remain “with another tranquility”.
“We haven’t forgotten what it’s like to be exposed to the markets. The price the country paid was too high and we don’t want to repeat it. We have to maintain this trajectory”, he declared, then receiving a prolonged round of applause with these allusions to the period of financial assistance between 2011 and 2014.
“When we hear the news that interest rates are going to increase, or that the European Central Bank (ECB) is going to reduce the purchase of public debt, in order not to live in anguish we have to have a very firm generation to continue to reduce our debt sustainably and that we are less exposed to this volatility”, he maintained.
Once again, the prime minister once again defended the thesis that macroeconomic balance is fundamental for the existence of redistributive policies of social justice.
According to the executive leader, “if it were not for the 2019 budget surplus, it would not have been possible to respond with the robustness with which it responded in the covid-19 crisis”.
“And it would not be the good management of public finances that we have continued to do, this year we would not have the capacity to fulfill everything we committed to the Portuguese and still have successively adopted measures to mitigate the brutal impact of the tribe”, he advocated.
António Costa later developed this point and noted: “This year, in extraordinary measures, we have already spent as much as the extraordinary measures that we had to spend to face covid-19”.
“We were able to do this without raising taxes”, he stressed.