Luís Augusto, The Lisbon MBA Alumnus and board member of the BNP Paribas Factor in Spain, comments September’s Barometer
Luís Augusto, The Lisbon MBA Alumnus, and current board member of BNP Paribas Factor, in Spain, commented on this quarter’s Barometer, a partnership between The Lisbon MBA and the Portuguese newspaper Jornal de Negócios.
In this quarter’s opinion poll, The Lisbon MBA alumni revealed pessimism about the evolution of the Portuguese economy. Almost 70% expect the economy to contract in the next 3 months. Of the 122 respondents, almost 40% believe in a slight contraction of the Portuguese GDP in the next three months, and 28% even point to an acute contraction, in line with what they expect to happen to the world economy.
Luís Augusto mentions that “the results of the Barometer also show the generalized pessimism that is felt regarding the evolution of the economic activity until the end of the year. Typically in the economy and in life, pessimism generates more pessimism, therefore a very slow recovery is expected until the end of 2021″.
Regarding the Portuguese labor market, about a third of the respondents anticipate a strong fall in employment and more than half foresee a slight fall. Only 13% believe that the current Portuguese employment situation will continue.
“Regarding employment, the survey is clear: the vast majority expects a negative evolution until the end of the year. This fact is directly related to the expectation that after the end of the simplified lay-off and the support to the gradual recovery, many companies will not be able to relocate all employees (without Government support) and have to downsize”, Luís Augusto states.
The impact of the pandemic on the labor market is further exacerbated by investment expectations, with 56% of respondents anticipating a pullback by investors. For the General Manager of BNP Paribas Factor, the percentage is not higher only because Portugal “is a very attractive destination for foreign investment” and therefore believes the Recovery and Resilience Plan measures “to be sufficiently clear and able to continue creating conditions for this attractiveness to improve even more ”.
As for the financing conditions, 42% believe they will stay the same, while 31% anticipate a deterioration, together with the end of the moratoriums and the growth of bad loans. The Lisbon MBA / Jornal de Negócios Barometer of September also reveals that more than 45% of respondents view remote work as a good thing, arguing that it has a positive impact on productivity, and almost 60% consider that it contributes to greater job satisfaction.
The Lisbon MBA / Business Barometer is the result of a partnership between Jornal de Negócios and The Lisbon MBA, and consists of a quarterly survey sent to our Alumni Community, inquiring on current economic and corporate trends.
Every edition is commented by an invited guest of our community. For this edition we had the privilege of having Luís Augusto commenting the results.
Read the full article in Portuguese here.
Source: Jornal de Negócios