By Andrea Hargraves 
What do you expect from the Portuguese economy?
According to IMF projections, we will have grown by 4.4% in 2021 and could grow by 5.1% in 2022. That sounds good, but we can’t forget that we had a huge gap in 2020, the year of the coronavirus outbreak. Portugal has been one of the economies hardest hit by the pandemic, even compared to the countries of the East. is it because? Because we were so dependent on tourism and with its collapse, the Portuguese economy was affected even more. When you look at the IMF forecast, it may seem like an amazing result, but it is still the primary impact compared to the stumble that occurred in 2020, but more importantly, Portugal is the second country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development with the largest economic decline compared to 2019 If you compare 2021 to 2019, we saw a decrease of 4.15% and Spain of 6.8%. The two countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are experiencing the largest economic downturn. And although we had some growth in 2021, it is still not enough to make up for the big crash we saw in 2020 and there are other forecasts made recently that show that between the fourth quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2021, Portugal scored. It decreased by 2.2% and Spain 6.6%. Although the IMF numbers seem reasonable, we will have a lower GDP than in 2019.
Did the epidemic and the additional costs spoil the accounts?
This indicates the fragility and lack of recovery capacity of the Portuguese economy. Ireland appears in the first place with a staggering growth of about 22% in 2021 compared to 2019, and Ireland has also been hit by the Covid-19 disease. This shows the fragility of the Portuguese economy, which does not have the recovery capacity of Ireland, a country we compared within the eurozone. Also of concern are the IMF’s forecasts for 2023 and 2024, which indicate lower growth: 2.5% and 2.4%, respectively. Let’s go back to anemic growth, not forgetting Portugal’s place in GDP per capita in purchasing power parity. If we compare it with 28 European countries, then in 2000 we were in 15th place, in 2005 we were in 17th place, in 2010 we fell to 19th place, in 2015 we held 19th place and in 2019 we dropped to 20th place. In 2021, we moved to 22nd place and predictions for 2026 put us at 23rd. Portugal continues to drop its GDP per capita ranking in terms of purchasing power parity. The IMF forecast is already taking into account the recovery and accommodation plan, which shows that there are no structural reforms in the country that would allow us to change our lives.
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