NECEP - Católica Lisbon Forecasting Lab is communicating its estimates for the Portuguese economy today.
The Lab estimates a 2% drop in GDP in 2021, a strong revision which is significantly lower than the previous forecast (-4.5 percentage points), which is justified by the new lockdown. The degree of uncertainty is very high, and one cannot rule out a drop closer to 4%, or, on the other hand, a scenario of growth up to 3%. It is likely that unemployment will rise to values between 7% and 8%, and that public Accounts will deteriorate. In all of 2020, GDP should have registered a drop of 8.4%, the largest in the last 60 years, after the last trimester in which the economy will have dropped 2.8% versus the previous trimester and 9% when compared to the same trimester in 2019 - these numbers a little better than what was expected when the State of Emergency was declared at the start of November.
You may access the summary for this report here.