INE revises the 2016 deficit downwards to 2%
The INE - Statistics Portugal - revises the 2016 deficit downwards to 2%, in comparison to the 2.1% initially foreseen.
This Wednesday, the INE — Statistics Portugal — revised downwards the 2016 deficit to 2%, as opposed to the 2.1% they had initially foreseen. “According to EU regulations, Statistics Portugal will send Eurostat today a revision of the first notification for 2017 of the Excessive Deficit Procedure (EDP)”, is stated in the revision of the first notification sent by Statistics Portugal on March 24. The document also reveals: “This revision determined a reduction of the net borrowing of General Government for 2016, which stood at 2.0% of GDP (2.1% in the previous release)”.
The revision is classified as “extraordinary” since it was “identified an error” in the use of data for Local Government. That error had a “significant impact” on the deficit of public administrations, Statistics Portugal explains in the Notification sent to Eurostat this Wednesday.
The revision determines an improvement of 84.9 million euros in the deficit, an amount which corresponds to 0.05% GDP. The 2016 deficit, in Statistics Portugal’s first notification, was 2.06% (an amount which had also been announced by the Finance Minister), which means the subtraction of the amount at issue brought the deficit to 2.01%. In 2016, public accounts ended up having a 3,722.4 million euros deficit — in other words, a 2% deficit.
