The Prime Minister announced today that the country must believe in the “absolute priority” the Government places on State reform if it wants to overcome excessive bureaucracy, which he described as a “blockade to economic growth.”
During the closing of the “Economy Without Borders” conference by Now, held at a hotel in Lisbon, Luís Montenegro expressed that while concrete decisions are not being announced yet, he urged the citizens to follow the Government’s “momentum” and not succumb to the “spirit of counter-reform reactions.”
“We are going to begin simplifying procedures, we will start by eliminating stages that currently serve as obstacles in the decision-making process within public administration. This will involve greater rigor, transparency, and accountability, but also less preliminary control. It must be stated precisely in these terms,” he declared.
Montenegro made an appeal to the Portuguese people at this point.
“The country must believe in this. If the country truly wants a State reform with results, it must believe, not necessarily in everything the Government says, but in the objective and premise, it must believe,” he urged.
The Prime Minister argued that the country must accept that “the excess of preliminary pronouncements, preliminary opinions, and the excess of entities contributing to decisions—entities that do not communicate directly but only via paperwork—is objectively a blockade to economic growth.”
“And being a blockade to economic growth, it hinders the ability to offer better salaries. It is a constraint on retaining more and better human resources,” he emphasized.
