A party spokesman, João Galamba, made the comments after the National Statistics Institute announced that growth was nil in the quarter, and that gross domestic product was up 1.4% on the third quarter of last year, while the jobless rate in October was unchanged at 12.4%.


"After the news of last week that the income tax surcharge will not be returned to taxpayers, these data show that the narrative of economic recovery that had been sold by the PSD and CDS before the elections, but which was always contested by the PS, was after all not true," Galamba told journalists in parliament.


The Socialist government took office last week, some two weeks after its right-of-centre predecessor was brought down in parliament by all left-of-centre parties voting together to reject its programme.


The right-of-centre coalition came first in the 4 October election but failed to secure a renewed majority.


In a separate statement, a spokesman for the Communist Party, António Filipe, said that the parties in the right-of-centre coalition had promoted "a big hoax" regarding the state of the economy.