“It seems clearly a strategy of attempting a double budgetary success: initially, a budget full of measures and investment intentions is produced. Then, in execution, these promises and intentions are ignored, resulting in a second success by year-end with public administration balances significantly higher than those forecast by the government,” stated José Maria Brandão de Brito during a hearing at the Budget, Finance, and Public Administration Committee, regarding the review of the State General Account 2023.
Highlighting the “unusual circumstance” of presenting accounts for a budget year of a government to which he did not belong, the minister of the current Democratic Alliance (AD) administration noted that this “budgetary strategy” of the socialist government—characterized by a “huge disparity between the forecasts for the public administration balance during the drafting of the State Budget and the actual execution”—had been used before in 2022.
In that year, he recalled, the government projected a 1.9% deficit but closed the fiscal year with a 0.3% deficit, representing a “forecast error” of 1.6 percentage points, “extremely high in these matters.”
However, “in 2023 the error was even greater, as a 0.9% deficit was projected in the State Budget, but it resulted in a 1.2% surplus.”
Rejecting the notion that “these errors” stem from “the Ministry of Finance’s inability to make forecasts”—”I’ve been at the ministry for a year and a half and have confirmed my impression of the high quality of the services and general directorates,” Brandão de Brito asserted—the Secretary of State attributed them to the mentioned “budgetary strategy” of “double success.”
Specifically in 2023, the Secretary of State detailed nearly 2 billion euros of under-execution in investment, compared to the 3 billion that contributed to the 1.2% GDP [Gross Domestic Product] surplus.
“If the government at the time had fulfilled its public investment plans, the budget surplus would have been a quarter or a third of what it turned out to be,” he emphasized, adding, “Whether it was a lack of capability or will, I cannot determine, but it was certainly one of the two.”
Criticizing the socialist governments’ “emphasis on making reservations [cativações]” to achieve “positive budget results,” José Maria Brandão de Brito dismissed the argument by PS deputy António Mendonça Mendes that the current government is “using a record level of reservations” this year.
“The major difference in the 2025 budget exercise compared to previous ones is that the ability to unblock reservations now lies with the sectoral ministers,” he stated, stressing that reservations “are no longer a control tool of the Ministry of Finance” and have become “the sectoral ministries’ responsibility.”
Regarding the difficulty that the Court of Auditors (TdC) has faced certifying the State General Account (CGE) due to missing information that should have been included, the Secretary of State assured that “incremental and structural improvements” are underway aiming for “a situation of account certification by the end of the legislature.”
He also noted a “significant push in the inventory of state properties,” aiming to “remove those not needed for state activities and return them to the real estate and rental markets.”
The expectation is that “the state’s entire real estate portfolio will be fully inventoried by the end of next year,” he stated.
