Joao Liao gives “good news” to the Portuguese before leaving the government

On his way out of the government, the Finance Minister released, Friday, data on the deficit, which fell by half last year, and the public debt, which fell by about 8%. Joao Liao also insisted on highlighting the development of employment in Portugal.

Finance Minister Joao Liao revealed today that reducing the deficit to 2.8% in 2021 strengthens the path of correct calculations and places Portugal among the small group of European Union countries with a deficit of less than 3%.

“This is good news for the Portuguese. Last year the deficit fell dramatically from 5.8 percent in 2020 to 2.8 percent in 2021. In 2020 due to the pandemic, economic activity in Portugal suffered the largest decline since World War II, but in 2021 the economy has already entered a strong recovery path with the economy growing by 4.9%Joao Liao said, stressing the “remarkable development in the labor market in particular” which “has maintained extraordinary resilience despite the pandemic crisis.”

Public debt is still higher than it was before the pandemic, But last year it’s down about 8%to 269 billion euros.

For the future, Joao Liao leaves the 1.9% deficit target to be achieved by his successor Fernando Medina. The idea is to make a new historic debt reduction that is transferred to the new executive.

“For 2022 and 2023, the strong economic recovery after the epidemic is expected to continue with an expected growth of 5% this year and 3.3% in 2023, taking advantage of the impact of the recovery after the outbreak of the Corona virus and driving the rate of enforced disappearance.. On the other hand, By 2023, the emergency emergency measures related to the pandemic and the TAP are expected to be phased out, which will generate budget savings of about 2.3% of GDP.“, I showed.

In this scenario, observe “The combined effect of the strong economic recovery of the past two years and the gradual implementation of emergency measures,” it is possible “to expect a significant improvement in the budget balance in the next two years”stressed Joao Liao.

“The main indicator for this is that the structural balance – excluding emergency measures – was already positive in 2021 with a budget surplus of 0.9%. Thus, the budget balance until 2023 should develop to values ​​close to the balance and those verified just before the pandemic. ”, concluded the Minister of Finance, who remembered, leaving the government.

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