Portugal buoyed by revised economic forecasts from Brussels
Portugal’s finance minister, Fernando Medina, reacted to revised macroeconomic forecasts released by Brussels today saying the risk of economic recession in Portugal is “far away”.
Brussels believes Portugal will grow by 1% this year, and that inflation will run at 5.4% (0.2% less than it forecast a few months ago).
As Medina told journalists at the beginning of a Council of Eurozone Finance Ministers (Eurogroup): “Higher growth and lower inflation: the risk of recession has been averted”,
The head of finance also said that the important fact was that “all projections at the moment show growth in positive territory for the Portuguese economy.
“Any additional growth capacity that we have and manage to achieve in 2023 is already based on very high capacity utilisation” achieved in 2022, he stressed
For Fernando Medina, the Brussels winter forecasts avoid, in terms of Gross Domestic Product growth, “a more complex scenario than the one that was anticipated a few months ago,” highlighting Brussels’ downward revision of the inflation rate.
Also in a press conference, the European Commissioner for the Economy, Paolo Gentiloni, confirmed that he expects the Portuguese economy to “once again perform better than projected by the Commission”.
Source: Lusa
