Lisbon, Nov. 29, 2024 (Lusa) - The leader of the Liberal Initiative accused the PSD/CDS-PP government on Friday of going against its programme and not wanting to change the state, thus justifying its vote against the State Budget for 2025 in the final vote.
At the close of the debate on the proposed State Budget for 2025 in parliament, on behalf of the Liberal Initiative (IL), Rui Rocha once again defended a reform that would reduce bureaucracy and reduce the size of the Public Administration through the "two out, one in" rule .
For the IL, the next budgets should include this rule and meet the objectives of "reducing 50,000 civil servants by the end of the legislature, focusing on administrative and bureaucratic areas" and "eliminating 20% to 30% of managerial positions", applying "an effective programme of fair evaluation and development" in the Public Administration, he said.
According to the president of IL, only his party has "the vision and courage to defend" this reform of the state.
"We have a vision that we want to see realised, but this budget won't contribute to that," he lamented, describing it as “a budget that changes nothing”.
Rui Rocha said, ' IL would vote in favour of a budget that gave clear signs of change in the country and “would vote to abstain with a budget that at least respected AD's electoral programme and the government's programme”.
"If neither of these two scenarios is fulfilled, IL, in the name of the country's interest, will vote against this budget and accept the challenge of defending alone the only vision of the country focused on growth and prosperity for the Portuguese. Unlike the others, he added, we won't trade Portugal's future for short-term electioneering.
Rui Rocha pointed to the "hundreds of millions in the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP)" and "the retirement of tens of thousands of civil servants over the next few years" as "two unrepeatable opportunities" to reform the state, which, he predicts, will be wasted because the government is "doing nothing concrete".
"We approved measures in this budget that go in that direction. The Save and Reward plan for the civil service, the review and rationalisation of the state's consultancy sector. But it's only a small step," he said.
The IL leader maintained that "the state should be doing well in essential areas, in defence, security, justice, mobility infrastructure, and funding universal access to education and health, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be doing well in other areas".
In this regard, he criticised the parties on the left and also the leader of Chega, André Ventura, saying that "he has that thing about walking around with Trump's little hat and Trump's little hands", but adopts the position that "the more spending the better".
On the other hand, Rui Rocha contested, among other proposals, the PSD and CDS-PP proposal to reduce VAT on bullfighting to 6%, when "VAT on construction remains at the maximum rate as if housing were a luxury good", and once again regretted that the PS did not support lowering company tax by two percentage points.
"Priorities have changed in Portugal," he concluded.
Generally, the proposed State Budget for 2025 was approved with votes in favour of the two parties that support the government, PSD and CDS-PP, and the PS abstaining, with votes against Chega, IL, BE, PCP, Livre and PAN.
This is the first budget proposal of the 24th Constitutional Government, headed by Luís Montenegro, who took office on 2 April following the snap parliamentary elections on 10 March.
In its macroeconomic scenario, the PSD/CDS-PP government predicts that the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will grow by 1.8% in 2024 and 2.1% in 2025 and that the inflation rate will fall to 2.6% this year and 2.3% next year.
The government aims to achieve budget surpluses of 0.4% this year and 0.3% next year. It also aims to reduce the public debt ratio to 95.9% of GDP in 2024 and 93.3% in 2025.
IEL/ADB // ADB.
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