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Portugal will decide on how it will exit its 78-billion-euro ($108 billion) bailout programme before a meeting of euro zone finance ministers in Brussels on Monday, the government said Tuesday.
Lisbon could opt for a precautionary line of credit when the bailout programme, extended three years ago, ends on May 17.
Alternatively it could take the route risked by Ireland four months ago — an outright return to the debt market without a standby loan.
“The government will make a decision and announce it to the Portuguese people by Sunday,” Parliamentary Affairs Minister Luis Marques Guedes told a meeting with foreign press in Lisbon.
“The national interest demands that Portugal decide as late as possible. Market perceptions take all data into account and all of that must be weighed by the government up until the last moment, he added.
“Ireland also waited until the eve of the last meeting of the Eurogroup to make its decision and it was right to do so.”
Portugal will be the second eurozone nation after Ireland to emerge from European Union-IMF bailouts, which have forced crisis-hit governments to apply deeply unpopular austerity measures so as to rein in bulging public deficits.
Unlike Ireland, which exited its bailout in December without a supplementary credit line, Portugal managed to resume bond auctions before the end of its 78-billion-euro rescue programme.
The country raised 750 million euros in the auction of benchmark 10-year government bonds, offering a yield of 3.575 percent.
Ireland did not hold its first post-bailout auction until last month.
Portugal obtained the 78-billion-euro rescue package in May 2011 to avert default, after decades of ballooning wages and state spending led to a massive build-up of public debt.
Last week representatives of Portugal’s so-called troika of international creditors — the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission, the European Central Bank — began their final evaluation of the country’s compliance with the terms of the bailout.