The cabinet office minister, Luís Marques Guedes, said in a news conference after the weekly cabinet meeting in Lisbon that "there has been bad faith on the part of the Socialist Party in its approach to the question of accounting for the resolution fund's capitalisation of Novo Banco."


Guedes stressed that way the €4.5-billion loan that the state lent the fund a year ago so that it could take over Novo Banco will be accounted for "still has to be decided by Eurostat for the purposes of the deficit". It would, he said, be "a mere accounting record" in the state accounts for 2014, with no impact on deficit target to which Portugal is committed as a European Union member.


According to the minister, the Socialist position "can only be explained as a weight on the conscience that it has relative to the way it handled the BPN case" in which a private bank, Banco Português de Negócios, was nationalised with a massive direct impact on the state accounts.


The loan to the resolution fund and the sale of Novo Banco, which is currently being negotiated by the Bank of Portugal, "will have no direct for the Portuguese taxpayer", Marques Guedes said. He acknowledged, however, that the state bank Caixa Geral de Depósitos is exposed to any losses generated by the sale, as are other banks.


The Bank of Portugal - which is in talks with three potential buyers, Anbang, Fosun and Apollo - aims to complete the sale as soon as possible, the minister said.