Centeno wants “Portugal in the Champions League” with public indebtedness below 100% of GDP

Finance Minister said this Tuesday that the biggest challenge Portugal faces in terms of public accounts is to put public debt below 100% of GDP, where it expects the country to arrive in 2023. Mário Centeno wants to enter the “Champions League” of public indebtedness, leaving the tail of Europe and joining other countries that are in the middle of the table, such as Spain.

The statements made by the candidate for membership of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament were made at the party’s headquarters in Lisbon. Anyone who watched the live broadcast could ask questions through the comment boxes.

Asked about the challenge facing Portugal until 2023, the last year of the next legislature, the Finance Minister remained within his field of action – the public accounts – and said that Portugal has the “enormous challenge that is” to have “a public indebtedness below 100%”.

Centeno said he would like to see Portugal coming out of the “tail of Europe” and playing “in the middle of the table”, taking into account that Portugal currently has a public debt of around 120% and that puts the country badly in the ranking of countries with the best public indebtedness situation.

If this desire is fulfilled – it is foreseen in the Stability Program that the country sent to Brussels in April and the commitment has not changed with the presentation of the electoral program of the PS -, Mario Centeno sees Portugal passing through other countries such as Spain with “enormous speed”.