Portugal’s President Believes Inflation In Europe Is ‘Going In The Right Direction’

THE President of Portugal voiced his belief on Friday, September 29, that inflation in Europe was ‘going in the right direction’.

Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa was speaking to journalists in the Algarve municipality of Faro, on the sidelines of the National Meeting of the National Strategy for the Integration of Homeless People.

He highlighted the declines in the year-on-year rate of change in the Consumer Price Index and the year-on-year inflation rate of the Eurozone that was announced this Friday.

Inflation dropped by 1.3 per cent in Europe

‘Europe, I’m not talking about Portugal anymore – in terms of inflation, we went down, but only a little, 0.1 per cent -, but in Europe it was more than a point, 1.3 per cent’, he explained, as reported by sicnoticias.pt.

The head of state continued: ‘This means that Europe, in general, even the countries that were very high, the Baltics, in Eastern Europe, and which weighed heavily on the European average, are experiencing this evolution’.

‘This shows that it is an ongoing phenomenon, no one thinks it was a consequence of the last decision of the European Central Bank, because that does not produce such effects in just 15 days’, he suggested.

Marcelo hopes that economists ‘start to have more open reasoning’

‘That the most rigid of economists start to have, it’s no longer a slightly softer heart, it’s that they start to have a more open mind towards understanding that inflation is on the right track, but the situation of many families, because of interest rates, is still on the wrong track’, he maintained.

In a speech, given minutes earlier, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa had already addressed this Friday’s ‘good news’. ‘Inflation is falling at a European level and it has also dropped a little in Portugal. Let’s see if this reaches important women and men in finance in Europe and the world to help with whatever they believe they should help with’, he declared.

Inflation has also declined in the Eurozone

According to the initial estimate released this Friday by the National Statistics Institute (INE), the annual rate of change in the Consumer Price Index was 3.6 per cent in September, which was 0.1 percentage points lower than in August.

The Eurozone’s annual inflation rate slowed to 4.3 per cent in September, compared to 5.2 per cent in August, according to a provisional estimate published by Eurostat.

Euro area #inflation at 4.3% in September 2023, down from 5.2% in August. Components: food, alcohol & tobacco +8.8%, services +4.7%, other goods +4.2%, energy -4.7% – flash estimate https://t.co/kEf2Z9hOkH pic.twitter.com/SLY2o2CWEc

— EU_Eurostat (@EU_Eurostat) September 29, 2023