Peniche, Leiria, Portugal, Oct. 14, 2024 (Lusa) - Portugal's prime minister refused on Monday to "throw a fiscal or budgetary tantrum" and insisted that the PSD/CDS-PP government's plan is to "make a difference" by reducing taxes, reiterating the importance of parliament approving the draft state budget for 2025.

Luís Montenegro was speaking at the inauguration of Omni fish's fish processing plant in Peniche, the third item on his agenda this morning in this municipality in the district of Leiria, where he never answered questions from the media.

"I've already spoken so much today," he said, when questioned by journalists as he left the company.

From the podium, the prime minister reiterated that, for the executive he leads, "fiscal policy is an instrument of economic policy", once again arguing that the country needs to reduce taxes on companies in order to be more competitive and on labour, especially young people, in order to retain talent in Portugal.

"When we talk about this, we're not throwing a fiscal or budgetary tantrum, we're actually making a difference. Of course, I'm not unaware of the political reality that lies ahead of me, I already know that I don't have an absolute majority in parliament and I already know that the government will have to make a rapprochement with the other parties for us to be able to implement this plan.  But this is the plan," he emphasised.

Montenegro wanted to take advantage of the inauguration of this new business unit to also ‘sell his fish’, with only one direct reference to next year's state budget, which is still uncertain of approval in parliament, precisely because of the differences with the opposition Socialist Party (PS) over the reduction in corporate income tax.

"For there to be success, for there to be growth, for there to be wealth, everyone has to collaborate, the public authorities have to collaborate, they have to have a sense of responsibility, they have to know how to look to the future, they have to approve state budgets, because they have to, and they have to pursue policies that are friendly to companies and friendly to workers," he said.

The prime minister argued that "a country that is losing a large part of its human capital abroad cannot remain asleep contemplating this reality".

"We need to take risks, we need to have an idea of sustainability, but not an idea of immobilisation, not an idea of looking at recipes that have already been tested and which have brought stagnation as their main result," he said.

Praising the public authorities he has met across the country, Montenegro made several references to the length of political cycles during the morning in Peniche.

"Even today we always have a time to enter and a time to leave, I don't know when the time to leave will be, I don't expect it to be soon, but that's in the hands, not of me, of the Portuguese people," he said at Omnifish.

Earlier, in his speech during a visit to the Peniche research centre of the Polytechnic Institute of Leiria, where the Science and Technology Park project was presented, he had already argued that the country must have a "line of continuity" and "be ahead of political cycles".

"The country has to be ahead of these [political] cycles, ahead of these concerns, it has to be always and always in a line of continuity that must not be lost," he said.

Montenegro praised the local mayors and entities for not having a "tapered vision of political cycles" and, after 10 years of the project and more than one mayoral term, with two mayoral presidencies, they are building the Smart Ocean business incubator, a €6.1 million investment dedicated to the maritime economy that is under construction in Peniche's fishing harbour and which is included in the technology park.

"I often say that coming to Peniche is cool and, in fact, it's cool in the two great meanings that the word has. It's cool because it's good and it's ‘fish’ because it's fish [in English],’ (this being a play on the Portuguese word 'fixe' = cool, which in Portuguese is pronounced in a similar way to 'fish')," he said in his final speech, which took place in a tent on the seafront and with a cocktail party attended by culinary chefs such as Kiko and Vítor Sobral.

SMA/AYLS // AYLS

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