Uma Visão Internacional da Situação Portuguesa

Se o leitor apenas escuta os meios de comunicação social portugueses, está imerso numa visão conspirativa e irrealista da nossa situação financeira e económica. 

Por isso, talvez goste de ler excerptos do artigo da respeitada agência financeira Bloomberg.

 

Portugal Bailout Brings Long-Prescribed Medicine: Euro Credit
2011-06-01 23:01:00.2 GMT

By Jim Silver
June 2 (Bloomberg) — Douro Azul SA, an operator of river
cruises in northern Portugal, had a problem with a manager at a
hotel it owned: He was pinching money from the petty-cash box.
When the debt ran into hundreds of euros, the company tried
to fire him. “For me, a case like that would be sufficient for
immediate dismissal, but the court didn’t think so,” said Mario
Ferreira, Douro Azul’s founder and chairman.
Ferreira, like many Portuguese employers, found that what
he thought was a clear instance for firing didn’t persuade labor
courts. Portugal’s constitution says employees may be dismissed
for “just cause.” Actually doing so is hard enough that the
European Union and International Monetary Fund made changes in
worker-dismissal rules a condition in the nation’s 78 billion-
euro ($112 billion) rescue last month.
As with Greece, investors are skeptical Portugal will
swallow its bailout medicine, which includes slashing spending,
raising revenue and imposing structural changes long prescribed
by economists and executives such as Ferreira. The yield on the
country’s 10-year bond rose this week to 9.77 percent, more than
three times Germany’s rate, as Portuguese voters prepare to go
to the polls on June 5 to elect a new government.
In exchange for aid, Portugal agreed to reduce workers’
severance payments, bringing them in line with the EU average.
It also vowed to keep private-sector wages from growing faster
than productivity; facilitate entry into the telecommunications
market, and enhance the power of phone and energy regulators;
phase out rent control; and merge 308 municipalities.

‘No Political Will’

“The measures seem to be everything that businessmen have
been talking about for a long time,” Ferreira said in an
interview. In the past, “there was no political will. Now they
can say the measures have to be implemented because they were
demanded by the troika,” he said, referring to negotiators from
the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF.
Socialist Prime Minister Jose Socrates sought the aid on
April 5 after parliament rejected his proposal for extra deficit
cuts amid a surge in borrowing costs, a move that prompted his
resignation and early elections. Portugal is the third bailout
victim of Europe’s debt crisis after Greece and Ireland.
The extra yield investors demand to hold 10-year Portuguese
bonds over German bunds of similar maturity has risen more than
200 basis points to 672 since the Social Democrats and People’s
Party rejected Socrates’s austerity plan. The two parties now
say they’ll join the premier’s Socialists in respecting the
restrictions of the bailout package.

Default Insurance

The cost of insuring against a Portuguese default reached a
record yesterday as investors increased bets the country won’t
be able to make good on its borrowing. Credit default swaps on
the nation’s debt closed at 691 basis points.
“Everybody knew that sooner or later we would smash
against a wall,” said Peter Villax, president of the Portuguese
Association of Family-Owned Companies and vice president of
biomedical firm Hovione FarmaCiencia SA. “What a pity Portugal
can only have good government when it is forced upon us.”
Spending cuts and revenue increases, intended to trim the
budget deficit to 3 percent of gross domestic product in 2013
from last year’s 9.1 percent, are contributing to the worst
economic slump in decades. Portugal’s economy already has among
the weakest growth rates in the euro area, expanding less than 1
percent on average in the decade through 2010.

Two-Year Contraction

While the government forecasts that GDP will contract 2
percent both this year and next, the economic overhaul may
slowly ease the pain. Loosening labor restrictions may add 1.1
percent to GDP over 10 years, and increasing competition for
non-tradable goods such as phone services may lift economic
output by 1.9 percent, the IMF estimated last year.
Portugal made the most progress toward liberalizing labor
rules from 2003 to 2009 among 28 Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development member countries, according to an
OECD study. Still, Portugal’s rules ranked as the eighth-most
restrictive among 30 countries.

…

Going to Court

Bailout terms also call for steps to speed the flow of
court hearings. The number of civil cases pending rose by about
50 percent in the decade through 2009, according to the Justice
Ministry.
“The courts are full of cases; nothing happens,” said
Carlos Barbot, chief executive officer of paint producer Barbot-
Industria de Tintas SA, adding that it’s taken his company more
than a decade to collect on back payments through the courts.
“Sometimes they make an agreement to pay, and then they pay or
they don’t pay.”
The Bank of Portugal said May 19 that “strict” adherence
to the rescue terms is “desirable and unavoidable,” warning
that broad political and social support is needed to defeat
“vested interests” opposed to change.
Ferreira, the Douro Azul chairman, isn’t optimistic that
elections will produce a government that will live up to
Portugal’s commitments.
“We need decision-makers who work like managers,” he said.
“To be honest, from what I see of the ones we have, it’s almost
impossible.”

…

–With assistance from Anabela Reis in Lisbon. Editors: Jeffrey
Donovan, Tim Quinson

To contact the reporter on this story:
Jim Silver in Lisbon at +351-21-340-4545 or
jsilver@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
David Risser at +44-20-7673-2513 or drisser@bloomberg.net.