European Commission requests Portugal more info
The Portuguese government has until Thursday, the 27 October, to reply to the letter sent by the EC and send the addicional information to Brussels.
The European Commission requested more information to the Portuguese government because of the “risk of significant deviation” of the structural balance compared to 2016 “from the recommended improvement of at least 0.6% of GDP”.
In a letter adressed to the minister of Finance, Mário Centeno, the European commissioners Valdis Dombrovskis e Pierre Moscovici consider more optimistic the macroeconomic scenario presented in Portugal’s Draft Budgetary Plan (DBP) related to the one projected by the Commission. Furthermore, the comission highlights the fact “that some announced measures are not sufficiently specified”.
“In view of these risks and discrepancies between the Draft Budgetary Plan and the Commission’s preliminary analysis, we would welcome further information on how Portugal will ensure compliance with the recommended effort for 2017”, say the commissioners.
But the Commission wants more: “It would be useful to receive details on the assumptions underlying the projection of revenues from all taxes and social security contributions and transfers. This would include updated information on tax execution in 2016 and specification of the expected yields of the recently introduced tax settlement scheme”.
The government has until Thursday, the 27 October, to reply to this letter and send the addicional information to Brussels.
