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Portuguese PM says low salaries have negative impact on competitiveness

Xinhua, January 18, 2017 Adjust font size:

Portugal's competitiveness cannot be based on low salaries, Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa said on Tuesday.

He pointed to the need to attract and maintain human capital, during the opening of a seminar at the Catholic University of Lisbon, adding that exports had risen in the past 20 years.

"Today, in a European country, competitiveness is based on factors associated to innovation. It is not worthwhile to have the illusion of a strategy based on low salaries if we cannot manage to be competitive," he said.

The Portuguese government has promised to reverse public wage cuts and lower taxes introduced by the former center right coalition.

Costa has blamed the previous administration for putting the burden on workers after the country signed a 78 billion euros (83 billion U.S. dollars) bailout program in 2011, which it exited in 2014.

Portugal's state budget for 2017 forecasts an economic growth of 1.5 percent and a budget deficit of 1.6 percent of GDP. Endit