“It is the first time that the IMF has been more optimistic than the Portuguese government. The IMF gets very little right about the national economy,” said Costa e Silva, in Covilhã, Castelo Branco district, where the inland tourism agenda was presented.
According to the minister, “people often underestimate the capacity of the Portuguese economy”, which he says is “very resilient”.
Costa e Silva added that despite the existing problems, inflation and the war in Ukraine, he estimated economic growth of 2% by the end of the year.
“The economy is on the right track and I hope it will continue to grow at least 2% or more until the end of this year,” the minister stressed.
For the official, the economic forecasts released by the IMF on Tuesday did not surprise him.
“They say the results of the first quarter of this year were a surprise. The results were not a surprise, they come in the wake of what the Portuguese economy produced and did in 2022,” emphasizes António Costa e Silva.
The minister stressed that exports are growing and last year the country achieved 50% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in terms of exports, which grew again by 13.3% in the first quarter of this year.
“If anything is going well in the country, it’s the economy,” he said. “We have an increasingly competitive economy, we are exporting more and more, and all of this is good for the future of the country,” the official added.
António Costa e Silva also highlighted tourism figures for overnight stays and revenues, highlighting that January, February and March of this year were “the best months ever for Portuguese tourism”.
The IMF justified the upward revision of the Portuguese economy’s growth this year, from 1% to 2.6%, with the above-expected performance in the first quarter, which will be “largely driven by tourism”.
“We were surprised by the result in the first quarter, which showed growth [de 2,5% em termos homólogos e 1,6% em cadeia] was much stronger than we expected,” Rupa Duttagupta, head of the IMF’s mission to Portugal, said during a virtual press conference for the Portuguese team’s final statement on the Article IV consultation.
On April 11, the IMF had pointed to a 1% growth in Portuguese GDP this year in its update of the global economic forecasts, but in the Article IV mission report released today, it revised this figure upwards to 2%. .6%, predicts a stabilization around 2% in the medium term.
In turn, the government forecasts growth of 1.8% in 2023.
Source: DN
