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As Greece struggles with its mounting debt, some other struggling European economies are trying to assure investors that they’re not the next Greece. One of those countries is Portugal. The World’s Gerry Hadden reports from Lisbon.

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MARCO WERMAN: I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  The European Union has offered to rescue Greece if necessary.  Today Greece’s Premiere criticized that offer as timid.  Greece’s huge debt is hurting Europe’s shared currency the Euro.  Some other troubled economies like Portugal want to show they’re not the next Greece.  The World’s Gerry Hadden reports from Lisbon.

GERRY HADDEN: Portuguese investment banker [PH] Carlos Andrage has spent the past several days on the phone with worried foreign investors.  He’s been trying to assure them of one thing, Portugal is not Greece.

CARLOS ANDRAGE: Fundamentals are different in terms of the economic performance and in terms of the way the economy will be able to grow.

GERRY: Andrage points out that Portugal’s debt stands at about 80 percent of GDP, Greece’s is over 120 percent.  What Andrage hopes to head off is a further erosion of confidence in his country.  Last week Portuguese stocks tumbled as fears mounted that Portugal, like Greece, might buckle.  This week Portugal’s finance minister Fernando Tichera Do Santos admitted Portugal is facing an unprecedented crisis.  But he said the country can get it’s own books in order.  Dismissing concerns it too might need a bailout.

FERNANDO SANTOS: Such a kind of a bailout would look like some kind of anesthesia that we’ll not correct what we should correct.  We must be able to correct by ourselves this situation.  We did it in the past and I believe we will be able to do it again.

GERRY: To that end Portugal is set to unveil an austerity plan to reduce public spending.   At the heart of it is a salary freeze for public employees.  That includes healthcare workers.  Here at a Lisbon hospital nurses are furious.  The government just tried to lower their pay by five percent.  Nurse Daniel Savrino says he can barely get by now on his $1300 a month wage.

DANIEL SAVRINO: I don’t believe that I could live well, I would survive of course, I wouldn’t be in a very problematic situation but I am married, I have some expenses with my house, and we are very short of money.

GERRY: Savrino and some 20,000 other nurses went on strike last month.  They had the backing of Portugal’s largest labor union, the CGTP.  Manuel Cavallio De Silva is the CGTP President.

MANUEL SILVA: [PORTUGUESE]

GERRY: He says if workers don’t resist these austerity policies it will be dangerous.  The government can’t keep demanding that the workers make sacrifices.  But as with all members of the Euro zone Portugal doesn’t have many options.  It can’t devaluate the currency or tinker with interest rates, such monetary policy is controlled by Brussels.  It can try to stimulate growth but that takes time.  And it must reduce the deficit now.  The government has already pledged not to raise taxes on individuals or businesses.  Along Lisbon’s waterfront Amine De Frera, a shipping company executive says the country needs tax relief.

AMINE DE FRERA: [PORTUGUESE]

GERRY: De Frera says the recent worry about Portugal has more to do with market speculation than catastrophic conditions.  Banker Carlos Andrage agrees.  He says investors should be gaining confidence in Europe generally after the EU’s announcement yesterday that it would come to Greece’s aid if necessary.

CARLOS ANDRAGE: If you look at an economy with very high personal deficit, very high public deficit, you may thing that this economy is close to collapsing.  But if you are part of a larger monetary union you have to look at things differently.  For me it doesn’t make sense to conceive the idea that the other member countries would be leaving behind one economy.

GERRY: In other words, if Greece won’t fall, neither will Portugal.  For The World I’m Gerry Hadden in Lisbon.

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