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In the New Year’s message to JN readers, the Head of Government highlights the fight against the pandemic and social inequalities.
Read the full message:
The year we will not forget and the new year we wish to remember
Today a year ago I published an extensive article on these pages, which I entitled “A decisive decade”, in which I set out our ambitious agenda for the decade, around the four great strategic challenges we face: climate change, demographic dynamics, transition digital, inequalities. .
Two months later, on March 2, the first case of covid-19 was diagnosed in Portugal. From one moment to the next, the world was swept away by a pandemic that decimated lives and created the greatest global economic crisis in our lives. Among us, we already mourn the loss of 6,906 lives and more than 400,000 people are or have been infected. The public health crisis has had a dramatic effect on all dimensions (personal, family, social, professional) of our lives. And it brutally affected our economy, especially in sectors such as tourism, catering, commerce or culture, interrupting a four-year cycle of growth above the Eurozone average, a sharp reduction in unemployment, growth in exports, improved income, which culminated in the first budget surplus of our democracy.
The collective mobilization of the Portuguese, the ability to convert our industry and its workers to produce means of individual protection, the prompt adaptation to telework, especially for teachers and students, and the extraordinary dedication of health professionals and others. Essential services have enabled us to overcome the first wave of the pandemic. It was a year in which we reinforced our sense of belonging to a community that did not lose hope, resisted, fought, which surpassed itself as a nation. And so we continue to contain this second wave and avoid a further increase.
It is in these moments of crisis that the importance of a robust social state and balanced public finances is emphasized. What would the last months have been like without a public school that, although closed, ensured by all means the continuity of learning? And without Social Security to support redundancy companies, unemployed workers, to create new social benefits to respond to atypical forms of work, would it strengthen support for households? And above all, without the NHS, what from public health to intensive care units responded to unprecedented pressure in its 41 years? What would it have been like if we had not been able to increase public spending by € 4107M without having to resort to any tax increase and keeping our external credibility intact? Only in the context of extraordinary measures to support employment and household income, we support more than 2 million people and 150 thousand companies, in a unique public policy effort.
This was also a watershed moment for the European project. This time, the European institutions were swift and assertive in their response, mainly to the historic decisions to jointly purchase HIV vaccines and jointly issue debt to finance an extraordinary program of economic recovery.
I am sure we will never forget this year 2020. But we have the opportunity to make 2021 a year that we will want to remember.
Two decisive factors justify our confidence. The first, of course, is the beginning of the vaccination process, which requires great international cooperation so that the vaccine reaches all human beings, wherever they reside and whatever their economic and social status.
In the European Union, and consequently in Portugal, the process will be long and will last until the end of the first quarter of 2022, although the greatest vaccination effort is already concentrated between March and September 2021. If the vaccines that are in development have been successful , if those that are already approved are approved, if no mishap occurs with the production of the vaccine that is already being administered, everything will continue to go as planned and by the end of the summer we may achieve the desired group immunity.
This is obviously the top of the list and will focus a large part of our collective effort throughout the year that begins today.
The second factor is the launch of the European Union Recovery and Resilience Program. One of the first tasks of the Portuguese Presidency that begins today is precisely to ensure the final approval of the respective Regulation and of the 27 national plans, first of all that of Portugal.
Our Plan responds to the urgency of reactivating the economy, but does not forget or sacrifice the great strategic challenges that we face. On the contrary, it allows us to accelerate the reforms and investments necessary to build a more resilient country from a social, economic and territorial point of view. Therefore, we asked Professor António Costa Silva for a Strategic Vision, in a very participatory process, which deserved a broad national consensus, and which ensures the articulation of this Plan to be executed until the end of 2026 with Portugal 2030, which will last until the end of the decade.
It is a plan of unique opportunities.
First, it will allow us to take decisive steps in the fight against social vulnerabilities; first, to continue strengthening the SNS; by the ambition to realize the right to housing; and betting on a new generation of social facilities and responses and integrated programs for the eradication of poverty.
Second, the PRR will be transformative in terms of our productive potential and the ability to generate quality jobs. We will put investment and innovation as engines of growth, for example through the Mobilizing Agendas for Reindustrialization. And we will reinforce competences and qualifications throughout the life cycle, through the modernization of education and vocational training, stimulating study areas related to engineering, new approaches for the qualification of adults.
Third, the Plan ensures the inclusive development of the territory. This ambition involves, for example, the renovation of the infrastructures of the Interior Business Location Areas or the opening of new cross-border connections, which are essential for the economic dynamism of the territories. But it also implies a more effective management of our forest, which allows us to improve the capacity to prevent and fight fires; and for a better use of our water resources in the Alentejo and the Algarve.
Finally, the Plan ensures that Portugal will be at the forefront in the double climate and the digital transition, which we do not see as limitations but rather as accelerators of modernization, with more competitive companies, with more and better jobs. Hence the great investment, at the same time, in the decarbonization of our industry, in the bioeconomy, in the energy efficiency of buildings and in the digital transformation of schools, companies and their workers, ensuring the means and training not to leave no one behind. Together with a renewed effort to reduce the costs of the context, through a program of digitization of the Public Administrations, which will make the State more agile and capable of responding to the needs of our citizens and companies.
Portugal fought for these funds and prepared with an ambitious PRR. We don’t just want to accelerate the crisis. We want to be stronger, more sustainable, more digital, less unequal and, above all, with a broader horizon for young people.
But economic recovery is also about protecting income, jobs and businesses. Therefore, we refuse to repeat the recipe for austerity, which only added crisis to the previous crisis.
When I wrote the article for JN a year ago, unemployment in Portugal was at its lowest level in the last 17 years and Portugal registered the lowest levels in the indicators of poverty, inequality and early school leaving. However, we are aware that the crisis caused by this pandemic has generated dramatic situations of poverty and inequality. That is why we are also fighting with all our might the battle against poverty.
The State Budget that comes into force today consolidates and reinforces this path. Increase the lowest pensions and continue to increase the Minimum Wage; creates extraordinary social support and raises the minimum threshold of unemployment benefit, protecting people from poverty; and adopts a fiscal policy focused on increasing the liquidity of households in general, increasing the IRS exemption threshold, lowering the VAT on electricity and decreasing the withholding tax on wages.
And, because we know that, in times of so much uncertainty, our companies and their workers need predictability, we will continue, in this new year, with a robust and transversal support package. Between March and December we added more than 21,000 million euros in support to the economy and employment. In 2021, we expanded the Support for Progressive Recovery, expanded and made the Apoiar Program more flexible, which allows us to cover part of the fixed costs of the companies most affected by the crisis, and we launched new mechanisms to support commercial income.
If 2020 was the year in which we had to do everything possible and impossible to respond to the unexpected of the pandemic, 2021 will be the year in which, by continuing to fight the pandemic, we give a new impetus to the construction of the future of Portugal . Nor can we waver in this Herculean task. Therefore, the extraordinary mobilization of the Portuguese must continue, now oriented towards reconstruction. This is a turning point, which will be decisive for Portugal. If we do not bow in the face of adversity, it will be with strengthened determination that we take on this new challenge.
Today is the first day of a decisive year. Decisive to overcome the pandemic, decisive for a solid economic and social recovery. Decisive for the future of Portugal.
António Costa
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