Economist says Portugal can turn the corner in 2022

The ex-president of the Council of Public Finances believes that the rejection by parliament of the State Budget 2022 provides an “opportunity” for the country to embark on a policy of “competitiveness based on productivity and sound financial responsibility”.

Without referring directly to forthcoming elections early next year, economist Teodora Cardoso hopes that Portugal will “turn over a new leaf” to “make up for lost time”.
When quizzed by the online news source ECO about the potential impact of the voting down of the State Budget on the Portuguese economy (the first time since 1974), the economist who spent years working at the Bank of Portugal began by separating the wheat from the chaff.
“We cannot criticise politicians for only looking at the immediate results of the measures they’ve adopted while at the same time judging them solely based on these results”.
The economist argued “for 2022 it is important to get things into perspective, not just that this year the GDP was a few percentage points above or below 2019”. In other words, Teodora Cardoso said it was neither here nor there if Portugal’s GDP grew 5.5% (government forecast for 2022) or 5.1% (forecast from the IMF).
What is important it is to look what other EU countries have already achieved or are close to achieving in terms of getting economies back to pre-pandemic levels.
“They did so because they followed the principles of economic governance which focus on competitiveness based on productivity and financial responsibility”, she said.
“An opportunity lies ahead in 2022 to finally accept the these principles of economic governance and put them into practice and begin to turn over a new leaf and recover the time we have lost for 25 years”, the economist added.