The opening of the Congress of FIPA – Federation of Portuguese Agro-food Industries, this Monday in Lisbon, was attended by the Minister of Agriculture, José Manuel Fernandes, and the president of CIP – Confederação Empresarial de Portugal, Armindo Monteiro, who shared the idea of the general secretary of the PS, Pedro Nuno Santos, being a radical when it comes to IRC (Corporate Income Tax).
“The CIP does not enter into the partisan discussion, but it worries me when the leader of a party establishes as a guiding principle for its programmatic base to be radically against lowering corporate taxes”, said Armindo Monteiro, in his speech.
The president of the CIP stated that, more than the cost, it is a matter of supporting companies, valuing them, defending the reduction of this tax.
“It is not possible to reconcile the principle of ‘we support companies’ with being radically against reducing their taxation in any form”, added the president of the employers’ confederation.
The next intervention was from the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, who shared the idea of radicalism.
“Fortunately we have a prime minister [Luís Montenegro, PSD] who knows Portugal, who is highly prepared and is not conditioned by radicalism. I apologize, but whoever believes that the IRC cannot be lowered when it is high, it is clear that whoever has this thought is a radical who is closer to what I call radicals and left-wing extremists and who is not moderate”, said José Manuel Fernandes.
The general secretary of the PS, Pedro Nuno Santos, has said that he rejects the State Budget for 2025 (OE2025) with the changes to the IRS and IRC proposed by the Government and that he does not accept “or any modeling” of these same measures because they “are bad” and even that wouldn’t make them good.
The socialists, according to their leader, cannot accept “two measures that would have a structural and permanent impact”.
The Government defends a gradual reduction in the IRC until the end of the legislature from 21 to 15%.
Still on the State Budget for 2025 and the discussions surrounding its feasibility, Armindo Monteiro considered the possibility of the country being governed in twelfths “very worrying”, but said it was “even worse to have to bring forward elections”.
“[Ambas as situações] would create an environment that is not conducive to overcoming the challenges that Portugal faces”, he stated.
Regarding salary increases, the president of the CIP stated that companies want to make increases but to do so they need to create more wealth, be more competitive and productive.
“We cannot continue in this kind of Portuguese economic miracle which is to distribute what cannot be created. It is important that we first create”, he said, arguing that an excessively expansionary policy on wages could have perverse effects, such as destroying jobs.
The State Budget proposal for 2025 must be submitted to the Assembly of the Republic by October 10th and still has uncertain approval, as the PSD and CDS-PP (parties that support the executive) have a total of 80 deputies, insufficient to guarantee the viability of the document.
