The Prime Minister estimated on Tuesday that the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) will add eight billion euros in revenue to the national economy and dismissed “concerns”, saying Portugal is always exceptional at exceptional times.
These optimistic views about the country’s coming years were expressed by António Costa at the end of a session on the reprogramming of the PRR at the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon.
On Friday, the European Commission approved the revision of Portugal’s PRR, which now stands at 22.2 billion euros, a change that took into account high inflation and the impact of the war in Ukraine.
“Our economy will accelerate its change with the PRR. We are making an investment that will not increase GDP today or in 2025. We are talking about investments that will add eight billion euros in turnover to the Portuguese economy from 2026.”he insisted.
According to the executive leader, the transformative effect of the PRR will entail the creation of 18,000 jobs, of which “11,000 are highly skilled”.
‘This change will enable the country to undergo structural change’he added, before expressing optimism about the country’s ability to implement the approximately 22 billion euros worth of PRR on time.
At this point, António Costa even argued that, in the specific Portuguese case, “Luckily the clock doesn’t stop”. He then made the case that the country performs better under pressure when challenges lie ahead.
“If you look closely, the country is always exceptional at exceptional moments. 25 years ago there was a lot of fear about the Expo 98, but it was a great success; we had a huge fear of what was going to happen at the 2004 European Championship. , whether there was a lot of violence, but there was no violence and everything was peaceful; even this year everyone was worried about World Youth Day, how they would survive this invasion of young people, but again it was a great success”he declared.
In other words: according to the Prime Minister, the Portuguese are “exceptional at exceptional times”.
“Our greatest difficulty is to be exceptional in our daily normality – and fortunately the PRR imposes this exceptionality on us, because that is the state in which we function best”he reinforced.
Source: DN
