“The economy has surprised us [pela positiva] quarter after quarter,” Mário Centeno said Tuesday at a round table at the Davos summit, organized by the World Economic Forum. The Bank of Portugal governor stressed that the 4th quarter was likely to have been one of positive growth and “perhaps we will also be surprised by the first half of the year”, he admitted.
Mário Centeno argued that Europe has behaved better than was feared at the beginning of the economic crisis aggravated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The main positive sign of the last few weeks was, said the governor of the Bank of Portugal, the news that the German economy had positive growth in the fourth quarter, avoiding the contraction that most economists considered likely.
On Friday, Germany’s official statistics agency reported economic stagnation on a quarterly basis (and growth of 1.9% compared to the same period last year). Based on these data, the German economy minister pointed out that the economic slowdown this winter will be more moderate than feared.
Centeno is participating this week in the summit in Davos, Switzerland, the 53rd annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, dedicated to the theme “Cooperation in a fragmented world.”
Recession. Will the world (and Portuguese) economy fall into a “banana” in 2023?
The Minister of Finance, Fernando Medina, ruled out on Monday the scenario of a recession in the Portuguese economy. “Our projections never coincided with this scenario, that was the scenario at the European level, not for our country. The scenario we have today for Portugal […] It is that we closed the year with a growing last quarter and, for now, we have no indications that the first quarter of the year will have a different result”, said Fernando Medina, at the entrance of a meeting of the Council of Finance Ministers of the Union Union (Ecofin), in Brussels.
Source: Observadora
