Portugal economy keeps on growing

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

Portugal has once again recorded a series of positive economic results in the space of just one week.
The unemployment rate hit a new low, debt yields fell to their best rates ever, overall well-being continued to improve, while the EU has revised Portugal’s budget deficit forecast down to just 1.4 percent for 2017.

Finance Minister Mário Centeno was this week in a celebratory mood yet again as Portugal auctioned off over a billion euros in sovereign debt at its lowest yield on record. This was even more satisfactory as it was the very fact that government debt had reached unsustainably high levels which led to Portugal asking the IMF and the EU for a bailout six years ago.
This appears to be partly the result of the move by Standard & Poor’s to upgrade Portugal’s credit rating in September, with Fitch and Moody’s now expected to follow suit, which would inevitably result in Portugal’s sovereign debt yields falling even further.

Portugal’s improving financial situation and status globally, have also seen positive results on a domestic front.

Figures out on Wednesday evening showed that dole queues had shrunk once again during the third quarter of year, dropping 0.3 points to 8.5
percent.

The current employment rate has not been this low since the end of 2008, Portugal Statistics (INE) said, with the outlook remaining positive for the final quarter in terms of job prospects.
Compared with figures from just a year ago, there are currently 105,500 fewer people paying weekly visits to their local job centres having since found employment.
There was also promise for the under-25’s, who have been hardest hit by the economic crisis, with the number of jobless in this age group tumbling by almost 25 percent the past 12 months.
On Thursday morning, while being cautious in attributing any particular policy, the European Commission positively revised its budget deficit forecast for Portugal in 2017 down to 1.4 percent from its previous figure of 1.8 percent.

Overall debt in relation to the GDP is also projected to fall from around 130 percent to 126 percent.
In a public engagement this week in Lisbon on the sidelines of the Lisbon Web Summit, Prime Minister António Costa underlined the country’s growing investment potential. He reminded potential investors that “Portugal is a great place to invest. Bureaucracy has been tamed and is shrinking; there is political and economic stability and the ecosystem is enjoying great prosperity.”

In: http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/...-growing/43820

[brennus dux gallorum]

And always remember to avoid our mistakes, and say no to any leftard, it will be destructive for your country and especially your economy.

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

And always remember to avoid our mistakes, and say no to any leftard, it will be destructive for your country and especially your economy.

Our government is actually leftist, though not as radical as Syriza. It is a minority government that includes the Socialist Party (leading and more moderate), supported by Bloco de Esquerda (literally translates as Left Bloc and is the equivalent to Syriza), the Portuguese Communist Party and the Ecologist Party "The Greens".

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

Portugal auctions €1.5bn in short-term debt


Portugal has auctioned six- and 12-month Treasury Notes worth €1.5 billion at the lowest yields ever it said on Wednesday.


The €1.1 billion of 12-month debt with an average yield of -0.349% was placed, again negative and lower than seen on 20 September 2017, when €1.25 billion of debt was sold with an average yield of -0.345% was sold, said the Ttreasury and Public Debt Management Agency (IGCP) at Bloomberg.

The €400 million of six-moth debt went at an interest rate of -0.400%, more negative than on September 20, when €500 million went at -0.363%.

According with the financial program of the fourth quarter of 2017, this is the last short-term debt issue at until the end of the year.

Source: http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/...erm-debt/43882

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

Jobless rate below eurozone average

Despite having only recently emerged from a bailout after the country slumped to the brink of bankruptcy, Portugal can now boast an unemployment rate which is below the average of the 19 member states of the eurozone group.

The latest drop in the jobless rate follows on what have been four years of near persistent improvements in the labour market.

Figures out this week by Portugal Statistics (INE) show that the unemployment rate fell to 8.5 percent in September, which is the lowest level since April 2008.

Estimates are that the continued growth in the total number of job vacancies will continue until at least the end of the current year.

The INE said the rate for September was 0.3 percentage points lower than August, when employment generally hits a high, and also showed a quarterly improvement of 0.6 percent.

The provisional estimate of the number of people out of work was 436,900 at the beginning of October.

Unemployment had already recorded a marked improvement in the quarter leading to June, with the number of jobless people shrinking from 10.1 percent to 8.8 percent in the space of just three months.

Portugal’s jobless rate is now below the eurozone average, and also is one of the economic area’s better locations for workers for the first time since start of sovereign debt crisis.

This comes after unemployment had soared to a disconcerting figure of 17 percent back in 2013, but this rate has now been cut in half in the space of four years.

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development this week meanwhile forecast that the number of jobless in Portugal would continue to fall, levelling out at a figure of 7.4 percent by 2019.

While the tourism industry has been a strong motor to drive for the growing number of jobs, a revival in the building industry has also seen more people exit dole queues and move to construction sites.

The German Ifo Institute and Euroconstruct this week projected continued growth in the Portuguese building industry, saying it would last at least until the year 2020. The groups said in following their joint research that they are foreseeing expansion of around 15 percent in the industry, which they argue is being boosted by strong performance in the tourism industry.

The forecasts did however take into account that the building industry had almost grown to a standstill in the past ten years, with growth partly due to a natural demand for housing after prolonged inactivity.

Source: http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/...-average/44042

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

EU hails ‘remarkable’ Portugal


This week, Portugal has once more come in for praise from the European Commission for its continued strong performances on the economic front. This underlines Portugal’s turnaround in the corridors of Brussels, as it comes less than two years after the EU said Portugal should face sanctions for breaching its deficit target by a mere 0.2 percent - substantially less than other economies such as France.




At the time, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, questioned over the differential treatment being given to Paris, said that the country could infringe targets “because it’s France.”

But upon unveiling Brussels’ Interim Winter Economic Forecast, Commissioner Pierre Moscovici, who is French, was full of praise for Portugal.
He termed the performance of Portugal’s economy during the course of 2017 as having been “remarkable”, after it grew by an estimated 2.7 percent.
Moscovici further described these latest figures as being “solid and robust”, and emphasised that Portugal has successively performed above economic forecasts.

“Portugal is in a spectacular recovery, but it is not yet one of the seven biggest economies in the euro zone,” the Commissioner for Finance and Economic Affairs said.

Latest available official figures also showed recently that Portugal was the country that enjoyed the best economic performance between July and September in the eurozone.

The acceleration of the economy confounded experts, who had forecast substantially lower growth and had even issued warnings of potential troublesome times ahead.

But speaking after these economic figures were released, Finance Minister Mário Centeno, who now also chairs the Eurogroup of Finance Ministers, noted that 127,000 jobs had been created since the beginning of the year. He also recalled that this was in stark contrast to 12 months ago, when 75,000 jobs were lost in the second half of 2015.

Overall, growth rates for the euro area and the EU also beat expectations last year as the transition from economic recovery to expansion continues. The euro area and EU economies are both estimated to have grown by 2.4 percent in 2017, the fastest pace in a decade, and slightly below that which was recorded here in Portugal.

Pierre Moscovici added that “the euro area is enjoying growth rates not seen since before the financial crisis. Unemployment and deficits continue to fall and investment is at last rising in a meaningful way.”

These figures were followed by news on Thursday that Portugal’s unemployment rate for 2017 was fixed at 8.9 percent, down 2.2 percent on the previous year, and even better than the government forecast rate of 9.2 percent.

Labour and Welfare Minister José Vieira da Silva, welcomed the latest figures and was quoted as telling Lusa News Agency that these numbers were “very positive and encouraging for the future”.

He stressed in particular the “very significant” reduction in long-term unemployment in recent months, as well as the fact that employment has been increasing by more than unemployment is falling, which he attributed to the fact that the active population is increasing and that the country has a greater capacity to create wealth.

Source: http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/...portugal/44697

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

Fastest growth this century

The Portuguese economy in 2017 grew quicker than the European union average, and also recorded the fastest growth since the beginning of the millennium. This growth comes only three years after Portugal emerged from a painful and austerity-laden bailout.

A flash estimate by Statistics Portugal (INE) said this week that Portugal’s gross domestic product (GDP) had increased from 1.5 percent in 2016 to 2.7 percent last year.
The Portuguese statistical agency attributed this exceptional growth to an increase in domestic demand, especially investment, while the contribution of net external demand remained unchanged.
The latest figures follow an extended period in which the economy failed to produce any wealth, with the country’s riches shrinking in all years except one between 2008 and 2013.
The expansion of the economy is also underlined by the fact that it has now grown for the past 15 consecutive quarters.

João Borges de Assunção, a professor at Lisbon’s Catholic University, in comments to Lusa News Agency this week, said the latest numbers represent one of the “healthiest [rates of growth] since Portugal entered the single currency” in 1999.

António da Ascensão Costa, a professor at Lisbon’s Higher Institute of Economy and Management (ISEG), meanwhile told Lusa that it was “probable that with 2017 growth GDP in real terms [excluding inflation effects] has reached the levels of 2010, before the troika, that is before the budget crisis”, to more than €179 billion. He noted that initial forecasts for 2017 were for growth of 1.7 percent, making the final outturn a “good result”.

Ascensão Costa also highlighted faster growth in private consumption, which is seen up 2.5 percent, as well as in investment, “which went from growth of one percent in 2016 to nine or ten percent in 2017”.
The chief economist at mutual Montepio Geral, Rui Serra, meanwhile told the news agency that growth had accelerated thanks above all to investment, “which grew at a good rate last year”, although this entailed more imports of equipment, resulting in a “slight negative contribution to net exports”.

Source: http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/...-century/44770

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

Vehicle output doubles

Portugal’s vehicle output in January 2018 was twice as high as in the same month last year, as more than 25,000 vehicles came off the assembly lines, an industry association (ACAP), said on Tuesday.


ACAP said almost all the output (97.2%) was shipped out of the country, boosting exports compared with the same period in 2017.

European Union member states imported most of the output, with Germany, France, Italy, the UK and Spain imported most of the domestic production.

Source: http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/...-doubles/44829

[Brás Garcia de Mascarenhas]

Jobless drop fourth biggest in Europe

Unemployment in Portugal has registered the fourth biggest drop in Europe.


Joblessness in Portugal fell from 10.1 percent to 7.9 percent in December, the fourth biggest drop in Europe after Cyprus, Greece and Croatia. Unemployment dropped across the EU as a whole and, in monthly terms, unemployment in Portugal remained at 7.9 percent in both December and January.

Source: http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/...n-europe/44932