Portugal envolvido em nova fuga de dados. Mais de 16 mil milhões de passwords expostas

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Gosto da "Iron Lady" para a nossa Manuela

Portugal has declared victory in a battle to slash its budget deficit and avoid becoming the first country to be sanctioned for breaching the European Union's growth and stability pact.


José Manuel Durão Barroso, prime minister, said his centre-right government had overturned expectations and achieved a feat unequalled in Europe by cutting the deficit from 4.1 per cent of gross domestic product in 2001 to 2.8 per cent this year.

The Portuguese had endured what were "perhaps the hardest times in the past 20 years" in 2002 so that the public accounts could be balanced, he said in his Christmas address.

As a result, Portugal could again be seen as a "serious and credible country" building the foundations for "solid and sustained economic growth".

Under the previous Socialist government, Portugal's deficit soared to 4.1 per cent of GDP last year, making it the first country to break the 3 per cent limit set under the eurozone stability pact, which underpins the single currency.

The European Commission threatened sanctions if Portugal remained in breach of the pact.

Mr Durão Barroso sees his government's success in cutting back the deficit in less than eight months in power as a political triumph that will reap benefits at home and abroad.

In new stability pact forecasts to be presented to the EU in January, Portugal aims to cut the deficit further to 2.4 per cent of GDP in 2004, falling to 0.5 per cent by 2006.

Having weathered strikes and protests over austerity measures, Mr Durão Barroso is able to promise that the Portuguese economy will be growing well above the average EU rate by 2006, when the next general election is due.

The deficit had been controlled "without falling into a recession", he said. Portugal's new forecasts, unveiled this week, see GDP growth rising from 0.7 per cent this year to 1.3 per cent in 2003 and 3.5 per cent in 2006.

The prime minister acknowledges that the sharp reduction in the deficit was the result of one-off revenue generating measures as much as structural reforms in public spending.

These include last-minute measures this month such as the sale of the state fixed-line telephone network and the introduction of new road tolls that will bring in an additional €653m ($674m).

In addition to trade union protests, the coalition government has come under fire from opposition parties for what they see as an ill-advised "obsession" with reducing the deficit.

Left-of-centre opponents have attacked the government for slashing public spending during a global slowdown and for complying with the eurozone rules when other EU countries, particularly France and Germany, are perceived as paying them little attention.

But Manuela Ferriera Leite, the finance minister known as the "iron lady" for her determined approach to disciplining public finances, praises the pact for forcing Portugal to make better uses of its resources. "The big advantage of the pact," she says, "is that it imposes a sustainable containment of public spending that encourages structural reform."

Fonte: FT.com, News Headlines