“We have good news from a budget execution standpoint, a robust surplus,” stated the Finance Minister in comments to journalists in Lisbon. “The Portuguese economy is strong, growing, generating employment, increasing wages, and the public sector holds a comfortable budgetary position,” he remarked.
The Finance Minister also suggested the possibility of introducing new measures: “We now have the room to propose new measures that weren’t possible a year ago.”
Miranda Sarmento emphasized that the surplus exceeded the Government’s expectations due to the “performance of the Portuguese economy.”
(GDP), in national accounting terms, surpassing the Government’s estimate of 0.4%, according to data released today by the National Statistics Institute (INE).
“The positive balance of the Public Administrations (AP), as a percentage of GDP, stood at 0.7% for the year ending in the 4th quarter of 2024, the same as observed in the previous quarter (1.2% in 2023),” according to the Quarterly National Accounts by Institutional Sector.
This quarterly evolution was attributed to an increase in both expenditure (0.9%) and revenue (0.9%). Revenue collection saw a notable rise, with current revenue increasing by 1.3%, which “reflects increases across all its components, except for taxes on income and property (-2.2%)” due to the implementation of new IRS withholding tables at source.
On the expenditure side, INE highlighted a 2.1% increase in current expenditure and an 11.1% decrease in capital expenditure.
