Head of Portugal's conservative party warns economy on bad track

Assuncao Cristas, head of the Portuguese conservative party CDS-PP, said on Friday that she was increasingly concerned about the path the country's economy was taking.

"Investment is being very penalized, we are not seeing investment, even public investment, and I ask the left-wing parties where complaints about public investment are," she said during a visit to an agricultural fair in northern Portugal, according to local media.

She said a lack of public investment was due to a climate of "lack of confidence."

Cristas also said that the possibility of raising pensions was out of the question until Portugal starts growing substantially.

Portugal's year-on-year growth for April to June this year was 0.9 percent, the National Institute of Statistics said earlier this week.

Cristas' conservative party was one of the two parties in the previous right-wing government coalition together with the Social Democrats, which steered Portugal through a 78 billion euro bailout.

The Socialist party headed by Prime Minister Antonio Costa, took power in November.

Costa has vowed to turn a page on austerity, a strategy opposite to that implemented by former Prime Minister Passos Coelho who applied harsh austerity including spending cuts and tax hikes.

Portugal saw a deficit of 4.4 percent last year, well above the EU benchmark of 3 percent. Costa has insisted after threats by the European Commission that the country will manage to lower its budget deficit to below 2.5 percent of GDP this year.

On Tuesday, the country's former Finance Minister Maria Luis Albuquerque also expressed concerns regarding Costa's strategy, claiming a second bailout could be needed. Endit