After a regular weekly cabinet meeting Maria Manuel Leitão Marques, the cabinet office minister, announced the four names, which had been proposed by the Minister of Finance, Mário Centeno, as being “of recognised competence in economic, financial and business matters” as required under the Bank of Portugal’s statutes.
Besides Louçã, an economist and university professor, and Murteira Nabo, who is also a former chairman of now-privatised companies Galp and Portugal Telecom, the appointees are João Talone, a former chief executive of Energias de Portugal, another privatised company, and Luis Nazaré, a former chairman of Portugal’s postal service, the CTT.
In a statement, the government said that the advisory board is called on to issue non-binding opinions on the Bank of Portugal’s annual report, and that its members may also be asked to comment “on matters that are submitted by the [bank’s] governor or by the management board”.
According to the Bank of Portugal’s website, the advisory board is chaired by the governor, and has among its other members deputy governors, former governors, the chairman of the bank’s audit committee, the four individuals “of recognised competence in economic, financial and business matters”, as well as the president of the Portuguese Banks Association, the president of the state debt management agency, the IGCP, and representatives of Portugal’s autonomous regions, the Azores and Madeira, to be appointed by their respective regional governments.
Although Louçã has withdrawn from active party politics, he remains a member of the Council of State, the panel of top advisors to Portugal’s president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, and is among prominent advocates of a restructuring of the country’s huge public debt - an idea that has been resisted by European Union officials and countries such as Germany that were net creditors in the Eurozone bailouts of recent years.
Portugal’s minority Socialist government has said it will not seek a unilateral restructuring but that it would like to see a broader debate on the restructuring of the debt of highly indebted EU member states.