Mission Concluding Statement 

Portugal: Concluding Statement of the First Post-Program Monitoring Discussion

November 5, 2014

An International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission visited Lisbon from October 28 to November 4, 2014, for the first Post-Program Monitoring discussion—part of the IMF’s regular surveillance of countries with IMF credit outstanding above 200 percent of quota. The IMF mission was coordinated with the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB). At the end of the visit, the mission issued the following statement:

1. The Portuguese economy continues to recover from a severe debt crisis. Output began to recover in 2013 and unemployment is receding from very high levels. The large pre-crisis current account deficit has turned into a surplus, the upward spiral in private indebtedness has been arrested, and substantial fiscal consolidation has been achieved. With access to sovereign debt markets restored, Portugal ended its EU-IMF supported program at the end of June this year, having accumulated a strong record of policy implementation, including by starting to tackle long-standing structural obstacles to growth and job creation.

2. But Portugal still faces a pressing growth challenge. Labor market slack remains at historically unprecedented levels, and under-investment is eroding the country’s capital stock. Under the staff’s baseline, aggregate demand is unlikely to grow at rates sufficient to absorb the bulk of the slack in the labor market over the next few years, and net investment will continue to remain low. In the mission’s view, and building on the progress already made, meeting this growth challenge will require fresh policy initiatives and efforts. In particular, policy makers need to address more forcefully the two most binding growth bottlenecks: low external competitiveness and excessive leverage, especially in the corporate sector.

3. At the same time, continuing fiscal consolidation and safeguarding financial stability have to remain priorities. In the staff’s assessment, the fiscal consolidation effort is poised to pause in 2015, further postponing the unavoidable additional fiscal adjustment needed to safeguard the sustainability of public debt. Given the legacies of high private sector leverage and resource misallocation, preserving financial stability will remain a challenging task, particularly if the economy’s growth bottlenecks are not tackled.

The growth challenge

4. The output recovery has so far been highly supportive of employment creation. The output expansion that started at the beginning of 2013 has been slow, even by the standards of Portugal’s past record of weak expansions. However, partly reflecting private consumption-led growth, employment has surprised on the upside, expanding by 2 percent year-on-year in the second quarter of 2014. Positive one-off effects on employment due to active labor market policies and some rehiring to compensate for excessive labor shedding during the 2011-12 recession should caution against expectations that this pace of employment creation can be sustained.

5. Notwithstanding these positive developments, the mission views medium-term growth as insufficient to make a decisive dent in Portugal’s labor market slack. The country’s available labor resources, defined as including the unemployed, discouraged workers, as well as workers on part-time work that would prefer to work more hours, suggests untapped opportunities to realize higher rates of economic growth. However, faster absorption of labor slack will only be possible if the most binding constraints on exports (low external competitiveness) and on business investment (excessive corporate leverage) are more forcefully tackled. Higher exports would facilitate sustainable increases in imports, especially of investment goods, creating a virtuous growth circle. An inability to meet this growth challenge would likely result in continued outward migration of large numbers of workers, while the skills of the unemployed that stay but cannot find jobs would degrade.

6. In Portugal’s case, boosting external competitiveness is undeniably difficult. With no effective devaluation tools available, structural reforms provide the only route to increasing the attractiveness of producing tradable goods and services. Moreover, these reforms have to overcome a long-established pattern toward allocating productive resources to sheltered sectors that offer high rents and low competition. In addition, in the current conjuncture, low inflation in Portugal’s key trading partners renders the needed relative price adjustment especially difficult.

7. Although Portugal has many of the pre-conditions needed to succeed, the bottlenecks to export-led growth are sizeable and well-known. The government’s own reform blueprint Road to Growth recognizes the critical importance of new reform initiatives to boost external competitiveness. And, as underscored by the most recent—and improved—international competitiveness rankings, Portugal has significant upside potential, as reflected in first-rate public infrastructure, a high-quality health and education system, a strong capacity for innovation and research, and the relative ease of starting new businesses. At the same time, these assessments also continue to highlight particularly onerous constraints on external competitiveness, including an inefficient public administration, a slow judicial system, restrictive labor regulations, and lack of effective competition in local product markets.

8. These bottlenecks should be tackled with more energy and purpose:

• First, the overall reform momentum, particularly in areas crucial for external competitiveness, seems to have flagged since the expiration of the program. In this context, the recent increase in the minimum wage was premature given the still sizable slack in the labor market, and there were more effective policy tools available to help low-income workers, including earned-income tax credits. The adopted measure is instead likely to make it more difficult for unskilled workers to find or keep their jobs.



• Second, the reform process remains excessively focused towards compliance with statutory measures. Instead, the process should be reoriented toward achieving measurable outcomes, and dynamically adjusting the reform inputs as needed.

9. The overhang of corporate debt needs to be more decisively addressed. Excessive debt constricts firms’ investment, undermines productivity, and results in resource misallocation to unviable firms. While the program helped put in place an improved legal framework to deal with standard corporate debt pressures, the systemic nature of the corporate debt overhang challenge requires additional efforts. Any credible policy solution will have to, first, address the incentives that led to widespread corporate over-borrowing in the first place, and, second, alleviate the constraints and coordination failures that prevent firm owners, creditors, and potential new investors to reach agreement to restructure the debts of viable firms. The latter is particularly difficult as it may entail additional losses for banks.

The financial stability challenge

10. Operating conditions for the financial sector remain difficult, prolonging the process of banks’ balance sheet repair. Despite recent challenges, financial stability has been preserved. These events, however, underscore that recovering from an economic crisis tends to be a protracted process, replete with unpleasant surprises. It is important that the opportunity provided by the ECB’s Comprehensive Assessment of the largest banks is a catalyst to strengthen the resilience of the banking system. Moreover, banks need to avoid taking excessive risks to compensate for weak profitability prospects, creating additional challenges for supervision. Looking ahead, the authorities’ strategy for Novo Banco will need to strike a fine balance between preserving financial stability and safeguarding public finances.

The fiscal consolidation challenge

11. Portugal has little leeway to digress from its fiscal policy commitments. While past Constitutional Court rulings may have constrained fiscal consolidation options, the still very high public debt and the need to maintain credibility vis-à-vis financial markets reinforce the imperative of continued fiscal adjustment within a medium-term perspective. This needs to be supported by sustained efforts to advance the fiscal structural agenda. In this context, recent improvements in tax compliance and the control of spending arrears, especially in the health sector, are welcome.

12. The 2015 budget is not in line with the commitments in the present medium-term fiscal framework. While the deficit target in the 2015 budget was increased moderately, from 2.5 to 2.7 percent of GDP, the staff’s assessment of the budget points to a markedly higher deficit, reflecting somewhat more conservative macroeconomic and revenue projections. This entails a worsening in the structural primary balance by 0.3 percent of potential GDP next year. Under the staff’s baseline, in the absence of further fiscal measures in 2015 and over the medium term, the projected deficit would continue to diverge from the authorities’ medium term budgetary commitments. This would also lead to an upward shift in the medium-term debt path.

The mission would like to express its gratitude to the Portuguese authorities and our counterparts at the European Commission and the European Central Bank for a close and constructive dialogue.