The President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, anticipated this Thursday that the Bank of Portugal will revise its growth forecast for the Portuguese economy in 2023 to “on the way to 2%, 1.8%”, admitting “that it may exceed 2%”.
The head of state was speaking in a hotel in Santo Domingo, at a meeting with Portuguese emigrants and representatives of national companies with a presence in the Dominican Republic, at the end of a short official visit to this country, before the 28th Ibero-American Summit.
In his speech, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa referred that Portugal registered in 2022 “the highest growth in Europe, at the same time with a deficit that is discovered every day that is lower” and “unemployment in historical numbers, little more than than technical unemployment”.
“Right now for 2023, when it was already known that [o crescimento] it would not be the same, the Bank of Portugal will revise, if it has not revised while we are here, the forecasts for 2023 on the way to 2%, 1.8%, but admitting — well, not saying it publicly — that it may exceed the 2% and go up, which in Europe is difficult, go up on the way to 3% at the end of the year”, he added.
On December 16th, the Bank of Portugal estimated growth of 1.5% for the Portuguese economy in 2023.
In this speech, the President of the Republic presented Portugal as one of “the countries in Europe and perhaps the best in the world to face the pandemic” of covid-19.
“Therefore, we came out of the pandemic well. Afterwards, we faced the economic effects of the pandemic well. We were one of the first three countries to present the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) in Brussels. We worked, we worked quickly”, these.
According to the head of state, “with the war in the middle and the effects of the war” in Ukraine, Portugal surpassed the year 2022 “taking advantage of the balance of the end of 2021 which was spectacular in economic terms, spectacular tourism, very good foreign investment and spectacular exports”.
“We took advantage of this balance sheet, which it gave us for the first quarter and second quarter of 2022, and the slowdown in the second half of 2022 did not prevent growth of 6.7%, the highest growth in Europe”, he continued.
As for the deficit, he declared that “it will be lower than previously thought, lower than 1.7% or 1.6%”.
On the other hand, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa pointed out that “tourism continues to rise”.
Earlier, in a speech at the National Congress of the Dominican Republic, the head of state stressed that the Portuguese economy had “the greatest growth in Europe” in 2022, and said that Portugal is a country that recovered “quickly in tourism” after the coronavirus pandemic. covid-19 and which is “recovering in foreign investment”.