Lisbon, Oct. 10, 2024 (Lusa) - Portugal's government said on Thursday that the proposed budget for 2025 (OE2025) "maintains and increases" the objective of reducing the tax burden "on families, young people and companies.
In the government's executive summary of the document, delivered to parliament today, the PSD/CDS-PP government points out that the main objectives of the budget for 2025 are "to recover, reform and relaunch Portugal with responsibility".
"The government, through the instrument for implementing public policies that are the budget, continues, in 2025, the fundamental vectors that have guided its government action since 2 April 2024," according to the text.
Regarding recovery, the PSD/CDS-PP government said that the budget proposal "extends the government's efforts to recover the welfare state", "reversing the trajectory of degradation" that it considers to have occurred during the eight years of Socialist rule.
"The objective is clear: to provide everyone with accessible, quality public services - in education, health, mobility, security, culture, as well as re-establishing a relationship of trust between the citizen user and the Public Administration," it said, highlighting the agreements reached with various special civil service careers.
The government also highlights as a "crucial dimension" the protection of the most vulnerable, "by improving pensions and increasing the Solidarity Supplement for the Elderly", but also "reinforcing crèches, in addition to the Health emergency plan".
"On the other hand, we have regulated immigration, which was out of control, introducing stricter criteria, so that those who come to us have decent conditions in which to live and work," the government summary added.
The tax area states that "the budget maintains and increases the government's objective of reducing the tax burden on families, young people and companies, which is imperative, not only to improve the income level of Portuguese but also to make the economy more competitive".
"Only increasing company productivity can allow them to pay better wages and offer better jobs. Only a more competitive economy will allow us to retain our young people, attract back the many who have emigrated in recent years and become a country of hope and future," it said.
The government's summary of reforms emphasised that "the transformation of the Portuguese economy is fundamental to increasing productivity and thus generating more economic growth".
"All of this within a framework of budgetary responsibility, maintaining budget surpluses that allow us to continue on a path of sustained reduction in public debt, protecting the country from external asymmetric shocks," the government emphasises.
The government's summary added that the submission of the National Medium-Term Structural Budget Programme 2025-2028 to the European Commission "constitutes a further sign of the government's commitment to macroeconomic and budgetary stability".
Today, the finance minister, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, handed the speaker of parliament the proposed budget for 2025, the first of the PSD/CDS minority government, led by the prime minister, Luís Montenegro, which has yet to secure its general viability - the vote is scheduled for the 31st.
If the PSD/CDS government's budget proposal is approved in general with the PS abstention or, alternatively, with the favourable votes of the Chega, it will then be examined in a special session in parliament between 22 and 29 November. The final overall vote on the budget is scheduled for 29 November.
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