The Minister of Economy and Territorial Cohesion, Castro Almeida, guaranteed this Tuesday, March 3, that the PTRR will be built “from the bottom up”, evaluating the country’s needs and costs, therefore admitting deficits in public accounts as a “necessary evil”.
“This time the PTRR [Portugal Transformação, Recuperação e Resiliência] will be built from the bottom up, i.e. the country will have to say what it wants to do, what priorities it has, what objectives it wants to achieve, what results it wants to achieve, and then it says ‘this costs X’. And then we do the sum, and then we’ll see how much it will take. And then the country will have to decide how long it will take to achieve those results”, he told journalists in Porto, at the Soares dos Reis National Museum, after the presentation of the plan, behind closed doors, to the mayors of the Northern Regional Council, and also after the inauguration of several vice-presidents of the Northern Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCDR).
Castro Almeida admitted impacts on public accounts and the possibility of deficits.
“The Prime Minister has already made it clear that We will try to keep public accounts balanced, but that is not our first priority. The first priority is to fulfill our obligations to people”, assured the minister.
Like this, “if it is necessary to have a budget deficit because of extraordinary support that is not repeatable, to solve the problem of a calamity situation, that is bad for the country, but it is a necessary evil”.
According to Castro Almeida, the PTRR “will have varied funding sources”, with the PRR (Recovery and Resilience Plan, currently underway) “releasing some money, because some things will have to be adjusted”, as well as the Portugal 2030 European funds program.
“The next programming cycle too, because we will want to make a plan that goes until 2034, we will have investments from the European Investment Bank [BEI]and we will also have to rely on the State Budget, which traditionally makes little contribution to public investments”, he noted.
According to Castro Almeida, “in recent years in Portugal, almost all public investment has been made with European funds and this plan will have to have a greater share of the State budget”.
The minister also highlighted as a priority until the end of the year “recovering what was damaged” by the bad weather, “namely clearing the bushes in the part where the trees were cut down: half of them are lying on the ground and have to be cleaned up before the fire season arrives”.
Specifically about the North, and after highlighting the importance of both the issue of fires and water, asked whether the new CCDR should continue with the Regional Spatial Planning Plan (PROT Norte), Castro Almeida said that “the regional planning plan is very vague, they all are”.
“Now, it is necessary to implement concrete actions. This plan [PTRR] We must specify where reservoirs or lakes will be built, for any form of water retention, so that we don’t let all the water that flows in the winter go into the sea and then have droughts in the summer, or to control floods at the time of the floods, but it needs to be done”, he specified.
According to Castro Almeida, the PTRR “will be an action plan, which will define what specifically should be done, with what priorities, where, with what financing, in what timeframe”.
“We want to do this program quickly, without rushing, but it has to be done with great intensity”, he stressed.
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