As the nation’s politicians lock horns in the run-up to autumn elections, the “truth” is that austerity and the policies demanded by the troika have seen Portugal’s public debt “skyrocket” 36.4%.
In simple terms this means that the Socialist government under currently-jailed prime minister José Sócrates left the country with a State debt of €164 billion, while the austerity-led government of the PSD under Pedro Passos Coelho with the backing of CDS-PP coalition partners has taken that total to €224 billion: an overall increase of €59.8 billion.
The data, supplied by public-debt ‘watchdog’ IGCP, translates into Portugal’s debt costing each of its citizens €21,350 - when in 2011 it cost around €15,650.
Carrying the news this morning, national tabloid Correio da Manhã equates the average annual increases to the money spent by Social Security on pensions: €14.9 billion - and stresses that while Europe’s attentions may be focused on Greece for the time being, “various specialists” are calling for the need to restructure Portugal’s spiralling public debt.
But for now, this reality is being kept as fuzzy as possible.
The PSD-CDS coalition is concentrating on warning the electorate of the folly of voting Socialist, and vice-versa.
Polls meantime put the possible results of the looming elections as too close to call, with the Socialists taking a minute lead - the kind that would require a coalition.
Speaking to Expresso, Socialist stalwart Ferro Rodrigues said any future coalition with the PSD would have to be with a new party leader. Passos Coelho is the duplicitous face of austerity, he said, “the personification of hypocrisy, because he thinks one thing and says many times the other… He acts like an angel, knowing that the concrete results of his policies are terrible for people”.
And as the backbiting is set to continue, Greece woke up this morning to a VAT increase of 10 percentage points (from 13% to 23%).
Britain’s Sky News said it was “hard to imagine” people facing this kind of hardship overnight, but it is exactly the same hardship suffered by Portugal as a result of the €79 billion bailout in 2011.
Article courtesy of the Portugal Resident http://portugalresident.com/
Comments
Even if all the other accounts were reset and corruption stopped, this constant bleed will always drain the euros away to the more industrially efficient areas.
Unless a regular, non-crisis system can be developed to feed cash back to the peripheral countries, the Euro will never be a viable idea.
In the US, richer states subsidize the poorer ones. That's the only way a currency union can work.
The rich states do well out of the deal, the poor states lose their indigenous industry and have to buy those goods from the successful states.
The money sent to Greece and Portugal goes straight back where it came from, driving economic growth all the way.
The Germans should stop whining, they're doing great out of all this. All that missing money is sitting in German banks.
Oh, and Swiss...
That the Greeks had all the scams and plucky Portugal, wrongly paralleling itself with Ireland, had just been caught out by the crisis through borrowing a little too enthusiastically.
So no doubt having an equal number to the Greeks of dodgy social security and pension claimants. But the Troika having told Portugal to keep these hidden under the "2 basketcases in the EU is too much" rule.
We now know that that Portugal had not just been massaging its own figures but consistently not even having the figures to massage in the 1st place!
That the Portuguese are still being obscured by their leadership from the realities can be seen today in the news of the Incendio's raging through the country.
Apparently more numerous and more extensive than for many years - yet where can we find out what is happening ? The Prociv website once so informative - now limiting itself to printed documents that tell us nothing to report !
In Greece, many workers have benefited from early retirement, set at 50 years for women and 55 for men who belong to one of the 600 job categories identified as particularly painful among which included;
- Hairdressers (because of dyes that may be considered harmful)
- The musicians of wind instruments (blowing into a flute is exhausting)
- TV presenters (the microphones are supposed to cause damage to health).
**** This law was adopted by the Socialist government of 1978.
Any fellow latino countries will fear contagion and scrutiny of themselves if standing up for a country that has so signally failed to join the EU.
Eastern EU are amazed that so many billions could be wasted or lost. And still are being ...
And get up and go northern states well know now that, if the EU had been run like Portugal has been and still is ... it would not have lasted 20 minutes.
Simple mathematics tell us that Portugal in reality borrowed over 100 billion euros more when under Troika supervision than the 78 it is always described as having had.
The Brussels elite knowing that, Portugal, unlike Greece and Italy was a particularly difficult 'basketcase' to explain to the world. A country in difficulties, not because it had tried to grow its economy, but because it had stagnated it.
But - with the whole emphasis on EU member states growing strong, vibrant economies - how to explain that Portugal in reality stood still?
'Secretly' working hard to be anti-competitive. Erecting barriers to entry with legislation designed to create endless restrictions and complications to entrepreneurs.
Whatever Brussels sent south over the years, whether money or ideas for progress, disappearing into the ether.
If not kept secret - the obvious question by the non-eurozone countries of the world being why support Portugal to stay in a team it never actually joined ... ?