Portugal Sets Vote to Stem Crisis as Bond Repayments Loom

Portugal will elect its next government on June 5, just 10 days before its last bond redemption of the year, as surging financing costs threaten to push the country to the brink of requiring a bailout.

“The amount of payments to be made this year in the form of interest costs and maturing loans is quite high,” President Anibal Cavaco Silva said last night in a speech in Lisbon after calling the vote two years early. “The next government faces an unprecedented economic and financial crisis.”