Portugal (capital Lisbon)
Country Comparisons: chart
World Factbook: Factbook: "Portugal has become a diversified and increasingly service-based economy since joining the European Community – the EU's predecessor – in 1986. Over the past two decades, successive governments have privatized many state-controlled firms and liberalized key areas of the economy, including the financial and telecommunications sectors... GDP fell again in 2011, as the government implemented austerity measures, including a 5% public salary cut, a 2% increase in the value-added tax, and an extraordinary tax on yearend bonuses to comply with conditions of an EU-IMF financial rescue package agreed to in May 2011."
GDP annual real (not per capita) growth rate estimate
2011: minus 2.2%
2010: 1.3%
2009: minus 2.5%
Unemployment rate
2011: 12.4%
2010: 10.8%
2009: 9.2%
2008: 7.6%
Public Debt
2011:
103.3% of GDP
2010; 93.5% OF GEP
Import/export balance
2011: exports 73.4% of imports in cash value – an unfavorable balance
Exports "clothing and footwear, machinery, chemicals, cork and paper products, hides."
Income Distribution – gini index
Ranks 73rd among 140 countries (higher rank number is more equal, lower rank number is less equal). Less equal than Britain, which ranks 94th, and more equal than the US, which ranks 45th.
Health expenditures
2009: 11.3% of GDP
Currency: the euro.
Religions
2001 census: Roman Catholic 84.5%, other Christian 2.2%, other 0.3%, unknown 9%, none 3.9%
Living in an urban area
2010: 63%
Migration rate
2012: More arriving than leaving. A net gain of 2.9 persons
per 1,000 population per year
In the year 2000, immigrants started coming from East and Central Europe. Many were from Ukraine.01)
Literacy, Age 15 and Older
2003: males 95.5%, females 91.3%
Religion
Roman Catholic 94%.
On the Iberian Peninsula, west of Spain. 1,793 kilometers of coastline along the Atlantic Ocean. Capital: Lisbon.
Chief of state: Aníbal Cavaco Silva (president) since 23 January 2011, Social Democratic Party (center-right). Head of government: Pedro Passos Coelho (prime minister) since 21 June 2011, Social Democratic Party (center-right).
Portugal is a parliamentary democratic republic, its monarchy having been deposed in 1910. For most of the following six decades Portugal had repressive government.
Portugal is one of the 1949 founding members of NATO
A left-wing military coup in 1974 returned the country to democracy.
Portugal gave up its African colonies in 1975.
Portugal enters the European Community, now the European Union, in 1986.
In the elections of February 2005, Portugal's Socialist Party, led by Jose Socrates, returns to power, having won their first absolute majority in parliament.
April 2005: Portugal's abortion laws have been among the strictest in Europe, but parliament agrees to hold a referendum on relaxing these laws.
An abortion referendum occurs on February 11, 2007, to decide whether to legalise abortion to ten weeks of pregnancy. The vote is 59.24% in favor. In April a new law expands the circumstances under which abortion is allowed.
October 2009: Socialist Party leader Jose Socrates forms a minority government.
March 2010: The government announces austerity measures, including cuts in public spending and tax increases.
March 2011: Parliament rejects the government's new austerity package. Jose Socrates continues as Prime Minister in a caretaker capacity.
April 2011 - Portugal becomes the third European Union country after Greece and Ireland to apply for EU financial assistance to help it cope with its budget deficit.
Copyright © 2009-2011 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.
