Background
He was born in 1920, at Lourenco Marques.
He was born in 1920, at Lourenco Marques.
Educated locally and graduated there at the Advanced Institute for Economic and Financial Sciences.
After teaching at a technical school he went to Lisbon and joined the Ministry of Finance, working in the insurance department. He rose to be an insurance inspector but resigned from the government service in 1949 to become a banker with the Banco Espirito Santo e Commercial in Lisbon. Ten years later he left to become chief accountant at the National Development Bank in September 1959. The following year he was promoted deputy director of the bank’s financial services, then director in February 1967 before rising to the top to be director-general. From 1962 to 1969 he was the bank’s delegate to the administrative council of the Portuguese Hydro-Electric Corporation.
One of his first measures as Secretary for the Economy was to refuse to allow any imports unless there were immediately available funds to cover the cost. He was ruthless in tackling the payments deficit of £24 million in 1970. He stopped the transfer of capital to Portugal and insisted that cotton should not be sent to Lisbon at prices below world levels but be put on the open market. He also promoted the development of cane sugar beyond the needs of Portugal. His drastic scale of rating priorities for import licences was designed to boost home production. This system has had a stimulating effect on many sectors of the economy.
Although trained as an apostle of orthodoxy as an accountant and an insurance inspector he was ready to abandon orthodox methods in order to remove the deficit in the balance of payments. Saying he “had not the time to read the Organic Law”, he was prepared to accept answers to the country’s economic problems even if they did not always conform to the policy of “economic integration” laid down by Salazar for the overseas territories.