Most recent posts from Portugal

Saudi-backed protests and unrest spread from France across several European countries. Trump pauses new Russia sanctions and permits Russian diesel sales to the US. Houthi missile strike kills at least 53 Yemeni government soldiers.

This presentation, delivered on the 10th anniversary of the BBVA Pension Institute in Portugal, analyzes the economic forecasts for Portugal and Spain, and the challenge of long-term aging of their population, as one of the challenges facing public systems pensions in Europe.

Following several years of relative calm, global debt has been steadily growing since the 2008 financial crisis. Aside from the question of public debt, corporate debt grew sharply from 73% of GDP in 2008 to peak at 102% in 2020, at the height of the pandemic.

GDP contracted by 7.6% in 2020. Increased uncertainty about the spread of COVID-19 and the measures implemented to contain it weighed on activity. The economy is set to slow over the coming quarters and is expected to grow by 4.0% in 2021 and accelerate to 5.1% in 2022.

GDP growth in Portugal is expected to be slightly higher than estimated a few months ago. Specifically, GDP could reach 1.9% in 2019 and 1.7% in 2020. This upward revision is explained by the historical review of the activity data carried out by the INE and because of the positive trend shown by some components of demand.

This week’s strong demand for bonds was driven by the fragile global macro backdrop. Chinese data continued to disappoint, U.S.-China trade war uncertainty lingered and the BoJ stepped up its dovish commentary.

A couple of years ago, the risk premium paid by the Portuguese 10-year government bond against its German counterpart was hovering between 350 and 400 basis points (bp). Meanwhile, the Spanish 10-year bond was paying between 100 and 125 bp.