Confirmation that the Portuguese economy continued to grow in the third quarter came this Wednesday, November 30. The INE reported a chained GDP (gross domestic product) increase of 0.4%, even higher than what was calculated in the second quarter (0.1%), largely due to private consumption, despite high inflation. But there are worrying signs, such as the fall, in two consecutive quarters, in investment.
The INE had already revealed the preliminary estimate at the end of October and has now confirmed it but has given more details on the different components of GDP. And investment is even the most worrisome case, according to economists contacted by the Observer.
“The main negative surprise came from investment (gross fixed capital formation)”, which contracted 1.7% in a chain after the 2.7% decrease that had already occurred in the previous (second) quarter, highlights the core of economics studies of Católica, in a note to which the Observer had access. He even says that “Investment seems to falter in 2022 after being the demand aggregate that best withstood the acute phase of the pandemic and confinement”???????? For João Borges de Assunção, director of that nucleus, “the issue of investment is a bit worrisome”, considering that “the simplest explanation is that the deterioration of the economy’s prospects, as well as the rise in interest rates, it is already being felt in investment. ”.
The same idea leaves the Observer Pedro Braz Teixeira, director of the Forum for Competitiveness, for whom “everything points to the lack of prospects for the economy” with a possible impact on the ability to increase sales and, therefore, limit the investment. . This limitation was also helped by the rise in interest rates which, if they rise for the State, rise more for companies. According to data from the ECB, the financing costs of companies in the euro zone already stand at 2.41%, when at the end of 2019 it was at 1.55%.
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Source: Observadora
