2014 was the “turning point year”, Portugal’s President Cavaco Silva has been busy telling nationals living in France. Using what Público described as a “didactic tone” (which the Oxford Dictionary of Current English defines as “tediously pedantic”) Cavaco affirmed that Portugal had “fulfilled all its promises with international entities as a result of the bailout that was made. It did not need a second bailout”.
“It had won the credibility of the markets and can now finance itself to satisfy its needs with relative ease due to low interest rates.”
The president was talking at a meeting with emigrant communities at the Portuguese embassy in Paris yesterday, just as elsewhere it was reported that Portugal’s financial rating could be in for some (relatively) good news.
Germany’s Commerzbank has said that it is confident Portugal’s BB rating could increase to BB+.
This is still in the “rubbish” category, but a step up nonetheless.
Meantime, Portugal’s public debt has reached €231.1 billion, reports Lisbon’s Technical Budget Support Unit (UTAO).
Breaking the news, UTAO explained this means public debt is still on the increase.
But Cavaco may have been unaware of this when he gave his didactically toned speech.
2014 “was the year that the economy started to grow”, he told his audience. “We started to create employment, unemployment started to fall. We balanced our external accounts, significantly reduced the deficit of our public accounts, our exports increased substantially”.
natasha.donn@algarveresident.com
