Portuguese finance minister Vítor Gaspar (pictured above) spoke to a small audience at the Brookings Institution Tuesday, notably less than 36 hours after Cyprus and the ‘troika’ of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund agreed on the terms for a Cypriot bailout — the fifth such eurozone bailout during the currency zone’s sovereign debt crisis.

Of course, Portugal is one of those of other five countries, and Gaspar, for the past 21 months, has been responsible for implementing the terms of Portugal’s own bailout program.

Gaspar presented as optimistic a case as possible for Portugal’s current economic state on Tuesday. But he admitted that despite gains in lowering the country’s budget deficit, restoring Portuguese banks to greater health, and boosting the growth of Portuguese exports (the latter as much a sign of painful ‘internal devaluation’ of wages and incomes within Portugal as any sign of newfound productivity or competitiveness), Portugal’s GDP growth and employment rate remain problematic.  The Portuguese economy contracted by 1.6% in 2011 and 3.2% in 2012, and is expected to contract by a further 2.3% in 2013, while its unemployment rate, as of the last quarter of 2012, is 16.9%, its highest level yet.

As Gaspar noted, Portugal’s economy — second only to Italy’s — was already on the ropes when it entered the eurozone.  In particular, from 1990 to 2012, he claimed that the Portuguese economy marked a poorer performance than either Japan during its ‘lost decade’ or the United States during the Great Depression.  Regardless of whether that’s exactly right, there’s no denying that Portugal has faced long-term structural problems — since 2000, it’s notched GDP growth in excess of 2% just once (in 2007, when it grew by 2.37%, and that was at the height of the eurozone and global credit boom).

Gaspar placed much of the blame on Portugal’s failure to pursue macroeconomic stability in accordance with ‘best practices’ — i.e., Portugal simply failed to adjust properly upon accession to the eurozone 14 years ago.

Gaspar serves under prime minister Pedro Passos Coelho, whose liberal, center-right Partido Social Democrata (PSD, Social Democratic Party) came to power in the last election in coalition with the more socially conservative Centro Democrático e Social – Partido Popular (CDS-PP, Democratic and Social Center — People’s Party).

Among his solutions are greater EU-level banking union as a means of reducing the risk premium associated with peripheral economies such as Portugal’s — Gaspar added that the higher borrowing costs that constitute financial headwinds, especially in the context of budgetary adjustment.

But it was surprising not to hear any mention of the emigration of up to 1 million Portuguese from the country over the past 14 years — and nearly 250,000 since 2011 alone.  Passos Coelho in late 2011 was criticized when he suggested that young, enterprising Portuguese citizens should emigrate to Portuguese-speaking countries, such as Brazil in South America, or to Angola in southeastern Africa, still in the throes of an oil boom.  Angolan visas issued to Portuguese nationals jumped from just 156 in the year 2006 to nearly 150,000 by mid-2012.

Mozambique, another former Portuguese colony, apparently issues 200 visas a day to Portuguese nationals.

Invariably, that escape valve has kept Portuguese unemployment lower than the rates over 25% recorded in Spain and Greece.

Edward Hugh at A Fistful of Euros has made a very compelling case that the emigration of younger, working age Portuguese, combined with a decreasing birth rate and greater longevity has resulted in relatively fewer workers contributing to pensions and health care for relatively greater numbers of retirees, placing extraordinary long-term fiscal pressure on Portugal, given the lackluster expectations for future growth: Continue reading Gaspar defends Portuguese economic program at Brookings →