Sergio Monteiro, the State Secretary for Infrastructure, Transport and Communications, says that there is “no money, not from the state, not from the European Union, to spend on new roads."
Thankfully Monteiro added that "there is only money for some maintenance of existing roads." Monteiro was attending a debate in Coimbra titled Workgroup for Infrastructure of High Added Value where he concluded that the roads Portugal already has are just fine.
"The financing of investment now has a different logic in which the funds of the European Union are going to be used as collateral to obtain loans," said Sérgio Monteiro who clearly has learned nothing from Portugal’s fiscal history.
The Secretary of State said that "investment in roads will not have funding, because this is no longer an eligible investment," and that currently "there is only money to do some maintenance on existing roads, so new road projects in various municipalities may not be realised."
So much for his in depth analysis of the country’s infrastructure as the many roads that were a very good idea indeed only a few years ago remain unfinished and now seem to be a very bad idea and will not be finished. This includes the promised bypasses on the Algarve’s choked EN 125 and the relief road to the east of Faro that sits there as a testament to the futility of life.
The sea is the new El Dorado and even the leader of the opposition, António José Seguro, said today in Setúbal that the use of marine resources should be a priority for the Portuguese government and advocated the transformation of Sines port into a large “intercontinental logistics platform.”
"We need to connect to the world through Sines by the sea, and connect to Sines to Europe by rail. But this requires some action," said Seguro who naturally then homed in on EC investment, "The action means investment and investment means getting EU funds in order to implement our vision." He too has learned little from Portugal’s recent past where EC infrastructure money has been wasted or simply siphoned off.
The socialist leader spoke at a weekend conference called `Knowledge and the Economy of the Sea’ which seems to have slipped into the socialist manifesto as he gave his rhetoric full throttle.
"They're coming, the EU funds and we need to help Sines’s economic development and job creation. I am talking of fisheries, tourism, tourism beaches, diving, cruising, freight transport, large ships, port activity, shipbuilding and repair, renewable energies, which are all of fundamental importance, and of all the potential that comes from biodiversity that exists in our ocean and the living, mineral and energy resources that are there to be exploited," added Seguro, neatly summarising the reasons why he is not the Prime Minister.
The Communists were not so keen on all this spending this weekend and reckon that the government has been stealing money from the pockets of the country’s workers and putting it into the wallets of its banking friends.
The general secretary of the PCP Jerónimo de Sousa accused the government of “ensuring that the large economic and financial groups, the moneylenders and speculators, would earn a substantial income at the expense and the ruin of the country."
He was speaking at a rally on the theme of 'defeating the government and recovering stolen wages and rights.'
Jerónimo de Sousa was not impressed at last week’s government bond issue of €3 billion at 5.1%, calling it a scandal, “This it is a colossal deal for the money bosses, the 5.1% interest rate we will have to pay is higher than the Troika loan interest rate, and the European Central Bank is lending at even lower rates of 0.25% but we are paying through the nose at rates of 5.1% while the banks get the money to invest at 0.27%," he said, and he does have a point.
