Budget raises taxes and envisages retrenchment of 12,000 public-sector staff as recession grips the economy.
Portugal's government has announced its 2013 budget, which outlined the harshest measures yet under the country's $101bn rescue plan.
Vitor Gaspar, finance minister, confirmed on Monday that the average income tax rate would rise from 9.8 per cent to 11.8per cent.
He said the budget was the only way for the country to meet its targets under the bailout.
The government also announced spending cuts worth $3.4bn, while around 12,000 public-sector workers were to lose their jobs.
The cuts are intended to reduce the budget deficit of Portugal to 4.5 per cent in 2013, which is still 1.5 per cent more than the target of three per cent set by the European Union.
The budget faced opposition from anti-government protesters, as protests took place outside the parliament buildings.Al Jazeera
Portugal unveils austere 2013 budget
The problem is always the same: the protesters against austerity lack a coherent ideology to combat these policies.
ReplyDeleteLet’s see what’s going on in Portugal right now. People are protesting against the government, but not against the EU that controls the currency, and can therefore impose the austerian policies they enjoy so much.
It´s the perfect form of control: the EU shows up in Lisbon every month or so under the guise of anonymous Troika employees, to dictate the amount of budget cuts required (if the Portuguese do not comply, the "money" contained in the “aid” package does not enter the country and the government will only be able to pay the exact amount that it raises in taxes; this mission fulfilled, the problem is left in the hands of the government of the "natives" so that it may handle the disastrous situation left by the troika with the people it governs. In this part of the story, the EU has already disappeared from the scene: it's none of their business, after all...
The decision to surrender monetary sovereignty to the EU, unconditionally and without compensation, was enthusiastically accepted by the Portuguese, Greeks, Spaniards, Irish, etc. for years if not decades before 1999.
Now, it's time to pay the bill for having given up being independent.
And the protesters have not yet realized what the origin of the current disaster is – and it’s likely that the periphery elites haven’t, either.
As for the true elite, that of the EU – especially the really enlightened and informed people who hold the reins of the ECB – they are probably reflecting, in philosophical mode, that dominating peoples and countries by controlling the issuance of money is truly the sweetest, easiest and more effective form of exercising hegemony.
Some methods of disorientation in Greek crisis :
ReplyDeletehttp://failedevolution.blogspot.gr/2012/10/some-methods-of-disorientation-in-greek.html
@ systems failure
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