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Portuguese president enacts state budget for 2017

Xinhua, December 22, 2016 Adjust font size:

Portugal's state budget for 2017 faces serious challenges, including the need for more economic growth, Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa said on Wednesday in an official address to the country.

"We need more economic growth to guarantee the stability of budgetary rigor in the upcoming years," Rebelo de Sousa said at the Belem palace in Lisbon, adding that there were four challenges the implementation of the budget faces.

He said the main challenges were unpredictability in the world and in Europe, the consolidation of the country's banking system, the need for economic growth and the need to increase exports and investment.

Portugal's state budget for 2017, which was approved last month in parliament, forecasts economic growth of 1.5 percent and a budget deficit of 1.6 percent of GDP next year.

On Wednesday, the country's Socialist Prime Minister Antonio Costa told journalists that the fact the president had enacted the state budget for next year reflected political stability, and said the deficit for this year will be below the 2.5 percent.

Portugal has one of the EU's highest government debt levels, which currently stands at 133 percent of GDP. Endit