The new governor of Portugal’s central bank, Álvaro Santos Pereira, has today defended structural reforms to promote growth and says “more needs to be done” to create housing, starting at local (municipal) level – an level that has fallen far too short in recent years.
During his speech at Lisbon’s ‘Museu do Dinheiro’ (Money Museum), the economist and one-time PSD minister of economy, considered that Portugal is today “better than it was a decade ago in economic terms, but still needs policies that promote growth, defending that for this essential structural reforms are needed, without detailing what those reforms are”, writes Jornal de Notícias.
In what on the face of it sounds like a fairly standard ‘starting speech’ for a central bank governor, Santos Pereira added that indebtedness generally (of the state, families and businesses) is also better than it was, but further reductions are needed “so that all economic agents are well prepared for eventual crises”.
Regarding the housing crisis, the incoming governor stressed that it isn’t just central government that must try and fix this, but local councils (which have done so little in this regard over recent years). To this end, Santos Pereira says it is important to reduce the obstacles and restrictions on construction imposed by municipal councils, as, in his view, it is ‘the countless restrictions on construction rather than the lack of economic incentives’ that are the main problem.
At 53, Álvaro Santos Pereira takes over from Mário Centeno – appointed by the Socialist government of António Costa after being Mr Costa’s finance minister for some years. (It is widely understood that Mário Centeno will now make a return to national politics, very possibly challenging José Luís Carneiro for the leadership of the PS Socialist party.)
Santos Pereira, meantime, comes to his new role from years at the OECD, where he was most recently chief economist.
Source: Jornal de Notícias
