Portugal’s election campaign struggles for attention under tariff spotlight
With so much chaos from America flooding the news pages, the fact that Portugal is yet again facing legislative elections is not registering so much with the general public. Politicians, however, are touring the country, pouring scorn on each other’s policies and approaches, in the hope that their messages break through.
Today, prime minister Luís Montenegro responded to his PS rival’s plan to use dividends from the state bank to fund house construction programmes saying the need for housing is much too important to be dependent on this kind of policy.
“Housing is such a priority, it is so essential to the country’s development strategy, that it cannot now be dependent on the volume of dividends from a particular bank, even if it is within the state perimetre. Its financing must be guaranteed, period, it must be guaranteed by public resources”, he said at the opening of the International Congress on Public Housing, taking place at Taguspark, Oeiras – meaning, ultimately, that the money will have to come from the State Budget/ European funding and any other resources that the state can secure from financing instruments. In this category. Mr Montenegro mentioned the European Investment Bank.
The caretaker PM went on to ostensibly pour cold water on the PS plan to ‘price fix’ the rental market, saying: “We cannot impose a model on a developer that is not in their interest, because that kills the business. It kills the possibility of a balance between those who rent and those who make available and are in the market looking for housing.”
In other words, there promises to be a bitter battle over approaches of PS Socialists, champing at the bit to regain power, and social democrats, intent on holding on to it.
In Luís Montenegro’s eyes, balance can only be achieved through increasing construction – whether public or private – and “providing some incentives and/ or benefits in exchange for containing rent, affordable rent”.
“Public policies must therefore act on the supply side, on the public supply side and also on the private supply side, with incentives for there to be more houses on the market so that the price can decrease,” he said.
When it comes to demand, the PM stressed that his party seeks to build 130,000 “new public housing units by the end of this decade”. ND
Source material: LUSA
