At the Organized Defense Conference Pla Sic Notícias, the prime minister said he had the new airport to help meet the 5% GDP investment target by 2035.
The construction of the new Lisbon airport will help Portugal meet the 5% investment target by 2032. The certainty was given by the Prime Minister on Monday in the debate organized by SIC Notícias.
“Someone doubts that the new airport will not tell,” specified Luís Montenegro stating that he still doesn’t know “qUal is the component that will be accounted for. ”
“These are infrastructures that have to have a component to be accounted for. We do not want to exceed the boundaries of the reasonable, but we will not stop doing what others do. We have a set of public investments that also have relief in the ability of our armed forces, have greater potential, greater resilience to use their expression,” he added.
Investment of 1,300 million euros until the end of the year in defense
The Prime Minister said that pOrtugal will invest another 1,300 million euros by the end of the year in defense, through a strategy that will be “the more credible the greater political support” have. Luís Montenegro, stressed That achieving investment objectives in this area of sovereignty implies a consensual strategy with the opposition.
From the perspective of the Prime Minister, who was challenged by the PS secretary general, José Luís Carneiro, for a with a defined period of three months, this strategy “It will be much more credible, internally and externally, the greater political support you have.”
The Chief Executive considered the PS “essential” to define a long -term goal and ensured dialogue with all parties, recognizing that the objective of reaching 5% of GDP in investments in defense, assumed at NATO Summit last month, is “ambitious”.
“We anticipated for the year 2025 an ambitious goal of achieving 2% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which implies an increase in expense of around thousand and three hundred million euros,” said Luís Montenegro.
According to the chief executive, who has so far referred to an investment increase of about billion euros by the end of the year, this goal will be achieved in three ways, namely through “maintenance and reinforcement of support for Ukraine “.
“A second axis is the reinforcement of our abilities anticipating some of the goals we had set for the coming years, in the background, accelerate the acquisition of equipment, and the achievement of goals regarding infrastructure investments,” he said, after having announced that the executive intends to anticipate funds from the Military Programming Law (LPM).
Lastly, the government is doing a “Reclassification and reassessment of some investments that are underway and others that will be made” of “dual“, that is, of military but also civil use.
Luís Montenegro argued that the country must look at this new cycle “Not as a cycle where we will spend more money and pass more checks, but as a cycle where we will invest for return, to take advantage.”
As for the goal of 5% of GDP until 2035, agreed at last month’s NATO summit, the Prime Minister assured that the government wants to fulfill it through “Small annual increments” numa “Ascending and credible trajectory”.
At this point, the chief executive stressed that all allies committed to this goal, including Spain, adding that he also wrote a letter to the NATO Secretary-General who did not want to make public.
“It is more ambitious from the point of view of its material execution than of its financial execution”
Questioned on how this investment is combined with the maintenance of the social state, Montenegro explained that the objective “It is more ambitious from the point of view of its material execution than of its financial execution”highlighting the difficulty in quickly acquiring military material that was not previously ordered.
The Prime Minister maintained the conviction that the country will have a budgetary surplus at the end of the year and stressed that, in the future, the government “It will have to have a budget management that will allocate to the defense area greater investment than what the tradition of recent years is.”
This is done “prioritizing investments” and no “Cutting in others”, but also looking at the financial return that the defense sector can generate.
Montenegro also stressed the importance of state reform to “Free financial resources” that can be invested in areas such as health, education or housing. “It is this plan that, seen in a transverse way, also has to free up enough resources to invest in defense “concluded.
– With Lusa
