Portugal’s government deficit projected by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will fall from 1.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022 to 1.2% this year, according to the Washington-based institution’s new Budget Monitor, Coordinated by Vítor Gaspar, Director of the IMF’s Budgetary Affairs Department.
The forecasts now released clash with the latest ones prepared by national authorities and sent to Eurostat on March 24 by the National Institute of Statistics (INE) in Brussels.
There, the official deficit calculated by the INE will have remained at just 0.4% of GDP, a value the government used to justify a return to fiscal slack through new support against the effects of inflation, a largely obtained margin , with last year’s very high inflation.
In the INE report, the Ministry of Finance therefore included a slight increase in the deficit to 0.9% this year.
The starting point of the IMF and the team led by the former Minister of Finance of the PSD is the aforementioned deficit of 1.9% in 2022, the same value that was included in the National Budget 2023 drawn up in October, six months ago.
The final discussion of the Budget Monitor and its figures was held by the Board of Directors of the IMF on March 30. The report published by INE on Portugal’s deficits and debts was released a week earlier, March 24but the IMF did not use the figures officially calculated on that date.
Dinheiro Vivo is trying to determine the reason for the apparent slowdown or the criteria that may have been used for the IMF to progress in this global study with substantially different values compared to those of the national government for the development of the deficit and debt of Portugal between 2022 and 2023.
Source: DN
