Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa has dismissed concerns about a possible deficit in 2025 as foreseen in the Bank of Portugal’s recently published economic bulletin for December.

Rebelo de Sousa spoke to journalists about the Bank of Portugal’s economic bulletin which suggests a return to a deficit situation in 2025, 0.1% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

“It’s true that the prime minister says that the governor is going against the grain because the forecasts all go in the opposite direction. But that’s always been the case. When he was a minister, the current governor, Mário Centeno, was always very demanding and orthodox regarding finances. And so it doesn’t change, at that age, it doesn’t change,” he said.

According to the president, Centeno “always prefers to prevent, always to tighten – that was the big issue with his government colleagues: they wanted to spend, and he wanted to tighten”.

Now, because of the external situation, “the governor wanted to say to the government: don’t spend too much, because there was slack, and there is still slack, but there are limits to slack,” he added, taking into account “increases in various sectors of the Public Administration, of benefits that had been due and promised for a long time”.

(Inês Escobar Lima | Lusa.pt)

Source: Euractiv.com