Each Portuguese spent less than 150 euros in culture in 2012 – Daily News – Lisbon

The Portuguese spent about 150 euros on culture in 2012, a cut of nearly 40 euros compared to 2010. This is just one of the data from yesterday is able to account by the Culture Satellite Account, first presented. After Finland, Poland, Spain and the Czech Republic, Portugal was the fifth country to create this statistical instrument which, for now, invalidates great comparisons.

But it is possible to make at least one, referred to in the report statistics from the National Statistics Institute (INE): Portugal is the country where the gross value added (GVA) of culture less affect the national GVA, a figure that varies between 3.2% in Finland and 1.7% Portugal. Anyway, it should be noted that, on average, in the period under review, the cultural activities contributed on average 2.7 billion generated by about 66,000 entities – value that exceeded the food industry and the agricultural sector ( both with about 2.3 billion). At Lusa, the Secretary of State for Culture, Jorge Barreto Xavier rated this amount as “extremely important to recognize that culture, rather than an expense act is an act of wealth creation”.

However, it is noted that the contribution of culture to the national economy decreased by 424.6 million euros between 2010 and 2012. The breaks are also one constant in this first presentation of the Culture Satellite Account for the analysis period, a ” general contraction phase of economic activity in Portugal “, as pointed out by the INE.

And if the consumption of cultural products fell from 1874 million in 2010 to 1,494 in 2010, GVA and employment activities related to culture decreased 7.6% and 6.5%, respectively, higher reductions than those registered in the national economy (3.5% and 3.9% in the same order). In numbers, that is to say that between 2010 and 2012 cultural activities lost 12,000 jobs, employing in 2012 almost 89,000 people, ie, accounting for 2% of total employment.

One last note, more positive: the information released yesterday by the National Institute of Statistics reports that the average salary in this activity area was “about 13% above the average of the economy” in the three years analyzed

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