“<span class=”news_bold”>No money will go unused. As the Government has always stated and will ensure, all grants from the PRR will be utilized, all of them, not a single euro will go uninvested, that is clear,” asserted Manuel Castro Almeida.
The minister made these comments to journalists on the sidelines of the inauguration of the multi-core optical fibers test bank at ISCTE, located on the Yellow Line of the Lisbon Metro.
Manuel Castro Almeida was responding to critiques from the PS Secretary-General, José Luís Carneiro, who urged the government to clarify the alteration list from the third and final reprogramming of the Portuguese PRR, indicating that projects like the Red Line of the Lisbon Metro, one of the eight stations of the Porto Metro’s Ruby Line, and the new Lisbon Hospital would lose funding.
Government Will Not Use All PRR Loans
“There is a part of the PRR that consists of loans, and some of these loans will not be utilized; instead, we will seek funding from other sources with cheaper interest rates, but none of the works planned under the PRR will be left unfinished”, stressed the official.
According to Castro Almeida, the metro line was removed from the PRR “because there wasn’t enough time to complete it within the deadlines,” and the Todos os Santos Hospital will no longer receive PRR loan financing “because there wasn’t enough time to execute it within the deadline”.
“But the Todos os Santos Hospital will continue, the Red Line of the metro will continue, so the projects will proceed, all the money provided by the European Union will be utilized, only the loan component will not be provided by the European Commission but will come from international markets at an equivalent interest rate without any detriment to the State,” he emphasized.
Castro Almeida further added that it would have been worse if the Government hadn’t revised the PRR because “we would reach the end and see a number of projects unfinished and not receive money”.
“We removed projects that evidently could not be completed within the deadline, like the metro line, which hasn’t even started yet, so how could it be completed on time. Ignoring the timing of this adjustment within the PRR would have been like banging our heads against a wall,” he highlighted.
According to the official, the government assessed which projects would not be completed in time, removed PRR financing from those and increased it in others.
“The money not spent in one area is invested in another. In some cases, we reduced ambition, and in others, we increased it,” he pointed out.
