PORTO, Portugal (MNI) – The Bank of Portugal foresees a difficult
period of economic adjustment ahead that will require domestic firms to
seek out more dynamic demand and financing abroad.
Portugal “has come to the end of 2010 without the economic recovery
and budget consolidation that was expected at the start of the year,”
BoP board member Teodora Cardoso said Monday at conference here on the
central bank’s statistics services.
This means “a new period of adjustment, one that is particularly
difficult, because the country will have to correct the trajectory of
its external indebtedness,” she warned.
Companies will be confronted with a serious slowdown of the
internal market and must turn increasingly to external markets and to
external sources of financing on their own merits, so as to become less
dependent on the ratings of Portugal, Cardoso advised.
Bank Governor Carlos da Silva Costa also underscored the importance
of foreign demand: “Tradable goods are critical to the recovery of the
Portuguese economy, the re-establishment of structural balances and the
creation of jobs.”
Small and medium-sized companies, which are the heart of the
economy, are the ones that need to contribute to a turnaround, Costa
stressed. He noted that information on small business is scarce and
encouraged entrepreneurs to improve their processing of statistics,
which would contribute to BoP’s data base.
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