The Government have announced it has been carrying out a revision of the estimates of growth until 2022 and was “optimistic” that Portugal will return to pre-pandemic covid-19 wealth levels next year.
Secretary of State for Fiscal Administration, António Mendes, said that the growth projections for this year and next “will clearly be above” what was foreseen in the stability programme.
“The numbers we are working on are clearly above what the stability program was designed to do. Today Banco de Portugal spoke of a 4.8% growth for this year - and we are still fine-tuning the final figure. But growth will be well above the forecasted 4%. It will also be above the 5% forecast for 2022”, he said.
According to the Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs, “in the aggregate of the two years, 2021 and 2022, Portugal will have the capacity to return to pre-pandemic levels of wealth”.
“And this is good news for the Portuguese. The Government's economic and budgetary policy allowed us to draw up a State Budget for 2022 which allows us to make choices about the size and incidence of the increase in household income”, said Mendes.
In front of journalists, he also said that the unemployment rate “is already below 7%, much better than what was stated in all forecasts, including the stability program”.
Asked whether the Government now has room to respond to the demands of greater spending by parties such as the PCP and the Left Bloc, António Mendes again referred to the importance of the country “not taking a step bigger than it can manage” and advocated that the rigor of previous years made it possible to respond to the pandemic crisis caused by covid-19.
The Secretary of State for Fiscal Affairs claimed that, for the next year, "there will be a lot of attention to income policy, whether from the point of view of fiscal policy or from the point of view of services."
“We have a high priority in the middle class, particularly in younger families with children. We also have a priority in the recovery of investment, whether public or proven, based, certainly, on the Recovery and Resilience Plan, but also on the fiscal side. An investment that allows the country to take advantage of this financial envelope to overcome its structural problems”, he added.
In this context, the secretary of State added that the Government “is quite optimistic with the presentation of its State Budget proposal for 2022, because it is good for the country and, therefore, it will certainly be a proposal that the majority of the Portuguese will not have difficulty in identifying with”.
Original article available in Portuguese at http://postal.pt/
