Against the background of a looming General Strike, the Liberal Initiative (IL) party candidate for Portugal’s January presidential elections addressed the International Club of Portugal on issues from productivity, housing, the economy, public debt and corruption. However, the event was inevitably overshadowed by Portugal’s controversial proposed labour law reforms.
Text: Chris Graeme; Photos: Fernando Bento (ICPT)
The British magazine The Economist trumpeted Portugal as the best performing economy in Europe across a basket of indicators from economic growth and employment to good financial housekeeping and fiscal competitiveness.
It was good news and good marketing for Portugal on the European and wider international stage, but the same sense of pride and confidence is not always appreciated on the ground by Portuguese companies which know better the problems of insipid growth and sluggish productivity Portugal has suffered from over the past 25 years.
And one Portuguese who knows Portugal’s reputation and standing within the European Union, as well as the not so well perceived problems that have plagued the country for decades, such as poor productivity and a low-wage economy, is the entrepreneur and Portuguese politician and Euro MP João Cotrim de Figueiredo who addressed business leaders at a lunch organised by the International Club of Portugal (ICPT) on Wednesday, December 10.
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