Confinement is affecting the Portuguese economy, but the vaccine for Covid-19 could lead to better developments later in the year. Valdis Dombrovskis, vice president of the European Commission, is convinced that in an interview with Jornal Económico he says that the economic perspective is directly linked to the speed of containing the pandemic.
“The fact that there is currently confinement is clearly affecting the economy, but with the implementation of vaccination, better developments can be expected later in the year,” said the European Commission's executive vice president, responsible for the Economy at the Service of People, on the sidelines of the visit to Lisbon with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, and seven other members of the College of Commissioners.
The vice president of the community executive warns that “economic forecasts are now very difficult. Basically they are an epidemiological forecast, because what is affecting the economy of all European Member States is the epidemiological situation ", stressing that" from this point of view, in fact, it is a different type of crisis, it is not an economic imbalance , or imbalance resulting from an external shock of the epidemic and the restrictions that Member States are forced to deal with the pandemic ”.
"Therefore, the economic perspective is directly linked to the speed with which the pandemic will be under control and I would say that the implementation of the vaccination that is currently taking place in all Member States gives hope for a better economic perspective as well", he highlights.
Valdis Dombrovskis referred possible updates of the projections for the Portuguese economy to the projections of the European Commission, which will be published next month. “Our autumn economic forecast for Portugal is for growth of 5,4% this year”, he stressed, recalling the projections for November.
In the autumn projections, the European Commission saw the Portuguese economy contracting 9,3% in 2020, before recovering to grow 5,4% in 2021 and 3,5% in 2021 and warned that “the risks are still negative due to the Portugal's high dependence on foreign tourism, where uncertainty remains significant ”.
