Portugal’s economy will continue to grow above the European Union average, helped by the country’s ability to attract investment, Economy Minister Pedro Siza Vieira said.
“We’ve seen for the past eight quarters Portugal growing above the EU average and we expect this to continue,” Siza Vieira said on Thursday in a Bloomberg Television interview at the Web Summit in Lisbon. “Growth has been driven mostly by exports and investment.”
While the Portuguese government sees the economy expanding 2.2 percent in 2019, the European Commission forecasts a sharper slowdown to 1.8 percent growth next year. That would be slower than its projections for an expansion of 1.9 percent in the euro area and the EU. Tourism has helped fuel the recovery of the Portuguese economy, which last year posted the fastest growth since 2000.