Portugal introduces tardy, brutal cuts

Portugal's Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho announced draconian new austerity measures on Monday. The cuts in the budget for 2012 are harsh, but there is no alternative, writes the chief editor of the business paper Jornal de Negócios, Pedro Santos Guerreiro, in the tabloid Correio da Manhã: "It's already too late. This year's budget deficit plus an even worse recession for next year have made drastic measures necessary - far more drastic than expected. Now no one is asking whether the 14 percent cut in civil servants' salaries and pensions is fair or not, and whether it is enough. No one knows right now whether even more cuts are in the pipeline. ... But we do know the following: cuts can affect not just pensions and salaries. This is the most brutal, but also the easiest way to trim the budget. It is the surest but also the most unfair way. The government has failed to slim down and has still not kept its promise of merging companies and institutions. The budget proposals presented yesterday were inevitable because nothing was done to solve the problems the day before. And what about tomorrow?"

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