The governor of the Bank of Portugal considers that, at times, “the country lives focused on a reality that is described with misleading numbers” and states that in the last eight years the active population with higher education has increased by an average of 70 thousand individuals per year.
Mario Centeno
ANTONIO COTRIM
The governor of Mário Centeno, said this Tuesday that there are “misleading numbers” regarding Portugal’s ability to retain qualified young people and said that the country can be a net recipient of graduates.
This Tuesday, Mário Centeno made the initial intervention at the Banco de Portugal conference dedicated to education and qualifications, in Lisbon, considering that sometimes “the country lives focused on a reality that is described with misleading numbers” and that it is up to an entity with the Banco de Portugal’s responsibility to “alert to this”, as it is not possible to make “good economic policies without good data and good economic analysis”.
According to the governor of the BdP, in the last eight years the active population with higher education has increased by an average of 70 thousand individuals per year and just over 50 thousand leave Portuguese universities (public and private) each year, so, he concluded, “Portugal has managed to be a net recipient of higher-educated graduates.
Centeno also said that Eurostat data “shows that the percentage of young Portuguese people who emigrate is lower – less than half – than what is observed in countries like Germany, Denmark or the Netherlands”.
On several public occasions Centeno has spoken about Portugal’s ability to retain young talent, considering that there are mistakes in the data on young emigration.
“Where are our graduates? They are here”
Precisely a year ago, in November 2023, the former Minister of Finance of the PS governments (of António Costa) warned of incorrect statistical numbers regarding graduates in the active population, an error that – he said then – was leaving “almost everyone on the couch of the psychoanalyst”.
“Where are our graduates? They are here. Since 2013 the number of graduates in the Portuguese population has increased from 1.3 million to 2.0 million. INE told us (…) that in the second quarter of this year there were 180 fewer graduates in Portugal, which was not true. According to the corrected version of the INE, the number of graduates will have increased by 71 thousand year-on-year”, said Centeno, who is an economist specializing in the labor market, at the CNN Portugal Summit.
Today, at the conference, Centeno called the progress that Portugal has made in education a “silent revolution”, after a “regime that reduced [o país] ignorance”. However, he warned, this “is never a conquered, definitive or even finished revolution” and estimated that at least another 20 years remain for Portugal to recover from its accumulated delay.
For Centeno, among the current bets should be pre-school education and the recovery of students impacted by the pandemic crisis (in which teaching was carried out remotely), considering that if it is not possible to correct the delay of young people whose education suffered due to The Covid-19 crisis will have an impact on your working life, with less ability to compete in the job market with other generations.
“Education is, without a doubt, the biggest investment we can make to build Portugal as a stronger society, more unity and better prepared for the challenges of the future”, said Centeno.
The governor of the Bank of Portugal also stated that to guarantee the future of new generations and democracy it is necessary to guarantee the country’s stability, “starting financially, but also economically and institutionally”.
