Economy
Since the Carnation Revolution (1974) which culminated with the end of one of its most notable phases of economic expansion (that started in the 1960s), there has been a significant change in annual economic growth. After the turmoil of the 1974 revolution and the PREC period, Portugal has been trying to adapt itself to a changing modern global economy. Since the 1990s, Portugal's economic development model has been slowly changing from one based on public consumption to one focused on exports, private investment, and development of the high-tech sector. Business services have overtaken more traditional industries such as textiles, clothing, footwear, cork (of which Portugal is the world's leading producer), wood products and beverages.
Most industry, business and finance are concentrated in Lisbon and Porto metropolitan areas. The districts of Aveiro, Braga, Coimbra, and Leiria are the biggest economic centres outside those two main metropolitan areas.
The Portuguese currency is the euro (€) and the country's economy has been in the eurozone from its beginning. Portugal's central bank is the Banco de Portugal, which is an integral part of the European System of Central Banks.
Read more about this topic: Portugal
Famous quotes containing the word economy:
“The aim of the laborer should be, not to get his living, to get “a good job,” but to perform well a certain work; and, even in a pecuniary sense, it would be economy for a town to pay its laborers so well that they would not feel that they were working for low ends, as for a livelihood merely, but for scientific, or even moral ends. Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular fruit of the summer.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Wise men read very sharply all your private history in your look and gait and behavior. The whole economy of nature is bent on expression. The tell-tale body is all tongues. Men are like Geneva watches with crystal faces which expose the whole movement.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)