Having become one of the eurozone’s “best students” in 2022 in terms of public accounts, Fernando Medina will clearly repeat this feat in 2023. The Finance Minister should achieve the third-best budget balance in the single currency and achieve the second-largest debt ratio reduction General. Performance far beyond what is required by European rules, which remain suspended and will only return in 2024, and may have a new, less demanding model for more indebted countries, such as Portugal.

In the notification on excessive deficit measures, sent by the National Statistical Institute (INE) to Eurostat a few days ago, the Ministry of Finance maintained this year’s deficit forecast at 0.4% of GDP. But it seems certain that the budget outcome will be much better. In May, the European Commission expected the deficit to reach just 0.1% of GDP. Moreover, in the first half of 2023 Portugal recorded a surplus of 1.1%, and the Council of Public Finances (CFP) estimated last week that in the absence of new measures, the year would end with a surplus of 0.9%. According to calculations by Ricardo Cabral, a professor at the ISEG Institute, the positive balance could be larger, still “well above 1% of GDP.” In other words, the city could exceed the only surplus in the history of Portuguese democracy, 0.1% of GDP, achieved in 2019 by Mario Centeno, then Antonio Costa’s finance minister and current governor of the Bank of Portugal.

This is an article from Expresso Weekly magazine. Click here To continue reading.