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Portuguese PM ask youths to return home country as unemployment falls

Xinhua, September 16, 2015 Adjust font size:

Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho said on Tuesday that the country's decreasing unemployment rate meant that young people who emigrated could now return to their home country.

"We have come to a time where unemployment is decreasing and employment is beginning to show there is light at the end of the tunnel, better times to come, with more economic growth and more growth of employment," he said.

His comments came after Eurostat revealed on Tuesday that Portugal and Greece registered the greatest growth of employment, 1.4 percent and 1.3 percent respectively, in the second quarter of 2015 compared with the previous quarter.

"Even Antonio Costa can invite the young Portuguese who emigrated to return to Portugal because we are creating employment to make that possible," he said ironically during a lunch with supporters in Portalegre, around 230km south of Lisbon, according to Portuguese Lusa News Agency.

Portugal signed a 78 euro billion bailout program in 2011 with the troika of international lenders and with unemployment soaring, many have fled the crisis in recent years.

Half a million young people emigrated from Portugal in the last decade, according to statistics released by the Portuguese National Institute of Statistics last year.

The Socialist party, the country's main opposition party, has accused the government of causing a "brain drain" and has said reforms are needed to halt unemployment.

The ruling center-right coalition faces elections on October 4. Endit