Porto, Portugal, Dec. 3, 2024 (Lusa) - Portugal's prime minister on Tuesday pointed to investment as the "fundamental variable" for achieving the economic growth targets set by the government, stressing that there is "a favourable cycle" for Portugal and that it is necessary to "take advantage of the constraints" of other countries.
"It's investment, this is the fundamental variable, but then there are other factors. We have to increase investment exponentially and for that we need to be especially attractive from a fiscal point of view, from the point of view of the functioning of the state, the bureaucratic burden, in terms of retaining talent (...) if we manage to do that we can have that return," said Luis Montenegro during a conference organised by the newspaper Eco in Porto.
The head of the executive, who was responding to a question about the government's economic growth target, was concerned about the current crisis in France, although he admitted that instability in other countries could be capitalised on by Portugal.
"I'm convinced that since Portugal is what it is today, a country seen from the outside with security and political stability, and social stability (...), we should have procedural competitiveness so that we can even take advantage, not wishing harm on others, of the constraints that others have at the moment, whether they are political constraints, financial constraints, or security constraints".
According to Montenegro, "there are countries with great political instability and so they don't offer security to investors, there are countries with serious financial problems and they don't offer security to investors".
"And, now I'll pass on the redundancy, there are countries with objective security problems that don't offer security either. I would say that this cycle is one that is favourable to Portugal, we have to do everything, and the government is doing everything, not to lose this distinctive factor," he pointed out.
Minutes earlier, in his speech, the head of government had highlighted the way the country is currently seen internationally: "In what has been the result achieved of stabilising and reducing public debt, containing our deficit and even being able to have several years of budget surplus, having had a change of governments and no change of objectives, the image we convey abroad is a strong one and we have to know how to take advantage of it."
For Montenegro, "incredible as it may seem", Portugal and Greece are currently "the ones with the most attractive conditions to be able to welcome large investments".
On the subject of political stability, when asked if the approved state budget was the government's budget, the prime minister replied that the document "is based on the implementation of policies decided by the government".
However, Montenegro blamed the opposition parties for the final version of the approved state budget: "I can't help but say that it's a budget that should be a national motivation, not only for the people and institutions but also for the opposition political parties. Why is that? Because by their choice, legitimate, well-founded, intentional, several of the budget's rules were approved by them, either in support of the government's initial proposal, or in cross-support between them against the government's proposal."
"This doesn't serve as an alibi for what the government has to do, it serves as accountability and a demand for sense from those who voluntarily wanted the budget to be what they themselves determined," he concluded.


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