Nicolau Santos addressed the parliamentary committee on Culture, Communication, Youth, and Sports, following the resignation of the television’s information directorate and the company’s reorganization, as per the requests of Livre and PS.
“Yes, the issue of capital increase is a serious constraint on RTP’s development and these investment projects,” responded the manager to the PS’s inquiry during the hearing.
“We have negative equity, and this affects the spreads, the interest rates that banks charge us, and as long as this debt, recognized by the European Commission, isn’t cleared, obviously, we face development constraints,” he pointed out.
When questioned about the real degree of autonomy of the Board of Directors (CA), the RTP president considered it limited and explained why.
“Precisely because our revenues are locked – and lawmakers could assist in this regard. Our revenues are locked, particularly the Audiovisual Contribution [CAV], since 2016,” he mentioned.
While the expenses “have been systematically increasing, precisely because whenever the Government decrees increases for the Public Service, we must apply them at RTP, this does not happen with the revenues.”
To give an idea, “in the past four years, the wage bill at RTP, with salary increases linked to increases in the Public Service, rose by 11 million euros,” a cost that needs to be absorbed, explained Nicolau Santos.
In summary, “we have locked revenues and increasing expenses.”
Thus, “let’s say the degree of autonomy of the Board of Directors is limited in this matter,” he concluded.
