The government wants to continue with “structural reforms”, including in the tax system and the labor market, which will allow the economy to grow above 3% in the medium term, the finance minister said this Friday at the “Portugal Capital Markets” “conference” day.
Joaquim Miranda Sarmento outlined the executive’s goal of increasing Portugal’s potential gross domestic product (GDP), which is currently “close to 2%, one of the lowest among European Union countries at our level of development”, to 3%.
“We hope that the economy can grow above 3% in the medium term, which will allow us to increase investment, create more jobs and maintain healthy public finances,” the minister defended in Lisbon in a speech that had the same high-profile theme: “How will policies support the economy of foreign investment?”
To achieve this goal, the minister listed a number of reforms the government wants to implement, starting with “reforming the tax system: there are court cases that take a long time and there are high levels of taxation in the IRS and IRC.”
“We intend to simplify the tax system to provide more resources to companies by lowering the IRC to 15% and to provide more resources to families by lowering the IRS, and we also want to improve tax fairness,” he said.
In addition, leader Luisa Montenegro also hopes to “carry out some reforms in the labor market,” which the minister characterizes as “very tough, with high levels of insecurity for those entering the market.”
Miranda Sarmento also highlighted some changes in support for companies, namely increasing capitalization, addressing the problem of scale and increasing the internationalization of companies through “incentives for more exports and investments abroad.”
According to the minister, these “structural reforms will create better opportunities to increase wages and jobs, as well as to maintain a balanced public finances.”
Regarding the possibility of achieving a balanced budget, taking into account the measures approved in parliament, the minister emphasized on the sidelines of the conference that “it is fundamentally important for the country to maintain a budget balance,” adding that “this is the responsibility, given the political situation, not only for the government, but also for what is approved in parliament.”