When Mário Centeno arrived, the class should have already started. The students, who filled the audience at Escola Secundária João de Deus, in Faro, accepted the teacher's 15 minutes of tolerance and received him standing. Centeno soon took on the role of a professor to talk about the economy, inflation, prices. And also from that time when he played the ball, in Vila Real de Santo António, far from thinking that, years later, he would be governor of Banco de Portugal, former Minister of Finance and president of the Eurogroup.
«This is more or less like coming home», began by saying Mário Centeno, to start the conversation on the afternoon of this Friday, January 20th.
Algarvian, born in Olhão, but also with links to Vila Real de Santo António and Alcoutim, Centeno grew up in the south of the country. His father, he revealed, was a student at Secundária João de Deus, at the time Liceu Nacional de Faro.
The conversation held with the students in this class had these more personal moments, but focused, above all, on the two areas that brought Mário Centeno to Faro: economics and finance.
The period we are going through, he considered, "is challenging" and "marked by an inflationary process that has lasted longer than what was desirable".
“This has not happened for many decades. The last inflationary surge was in the 80s of the last century», he recalled to an audience that listened to him attentively.
According to Mário Centeno, central banks are currently «making decisions so that inflation, in two years' time, is 2%»... and there is even good news.
As he did in Davos, at the World Economic Forum, Mário Centeno was confident in the future.
The origin of inflation, he defended, «is fading». “I'm talking about energy shocks. The price of energy is falling and the prices of foodstuffs are also showing negative variations", he said.
«All this will be transmitted to the prices that we see in supermarkets. Together with the effort that monetary policy is making, we expect that the inflation rate will gradually but sustainably reduce throughout 2023», predicted the former Minister of Finance.
Mário Centeno nevertheless asked for “restraint and patience”.
“The good thing is that our economy is at full employment. We have the productive factors, employment and capital, in Portugal and a little in Europe, fully occupied and producing. The unemployment rate is very low and we can expect that, in the coming months and semesters, this will remain so. It is a guarantee that the cost that this fight against inflation may have is mitigated », he said.
The students also had some questions.
One of them, by a young student, was about the impact that the recent controversies in the Government are having on the economy. Centeno, as Costa's former finance minister, had his say.
“Stability and predictability are the two most important factors for economic success, and neither is fundamentally anti-democratic. I have no problem with political processes that might question us whether we are on the right track. The only line we must guarantee is that we respect these processes. We are nowhere near that and none of this has an impact on our economic and financial decisions», he defended.
Mário Centeno even said that «we must believe in the stability that we conquered so hard».
Because, he recalled, since the beginning of the century, Portugal has lived «80% of the days in financial default».
«From 2002 to 2017, we were essentially in financial default, which means instability, doubts from others about our ability to comply... It was from that year onwards that financial results were better than expected», he defended.
In this class, the governor of Banco de Portugal took the opportunity to leave a message to all students.
«Improving schooling levels is the only way we can take advantage of all the incentives for economic growth that we have available».
For the end, Mário Centeno left the most personal answer. When you were young, did you imagine that you would be finance minister and governor of Banco de Portugal?, asked a student.
The answer made the room laugh.
«When I played ball at Praça Marquês de Pombal [in Vila Real de Santo António], if I ever thought I was here with you talking about the economy, the answer is no. I'm not going to invite you to play football, because I can't keep up with you anymore, but my concerns – and I won't say which club I belong to – were those».
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