Jorge Braga de Macedo  Minister of Finance of Portugal

Carregue aqui para uma versão em português  Press here for a version in Portuguese

I was sworn in as Minister of Finance on 31 October 1991. In that capacity, I concluded the negotiations of the Inter-Governmental Conference on Economic and Monetary Union and signed the Treaty on European Union.
 

Click here to see some official pictures

I participated in the Council of Economics and Finance Ministers (Ecofin) during the Dutch, British, Danish and Belgian Presidencies and chaired it during the Portuguese Presidency in the first semester of 1992.

I also prepared the 1992, 1993 and 1994 government budgets and defended them in Parliament, together with the 1991-95 and 1993-96 convergence programs.

Official documents contain a description of these measures, including English translations of the two convergence programs.

A summary statement in English of the government global economic policy can be found in my statement to the 1992 annual meeting of the Trilateral Commission in Lisbon on April 25-27.

Developments related to the design and implementation of Portugal's global economic policy, involve in particular:
- chairing the tripartite negotiations leading to the February 1992 price and wage agreement,
- designing and implementing the entry of the escudo in the European Monetary System in April,
- anticipating the full liberalization of capital movements by the Bank of Portugal in December,
- engineering the return of the Treasury to international borrowing during 1993.

The Ministry was also responsible for the preparation of the White Paper on Growth, Competitiveness and Employment, the Portuguese submission to which was published in vol 2 of the Bulletin of the European Communities, Supplement 6/93.

I left office in the cabinet reshuffle of December 7, 1993 involving also major "spending" Ministries (Social Security, Health and Education) and took my seat in Parliament.

I have since returned to parliament to testify on decisions I took as Minister, namely the privatization of Totta bank, the agreement reached with Antonio Champalimaud, and the guarantee provided by the current Minister of Finance to a trade union.
 

Click here to return to my homepage