Portugal released seven times more appropriations until August than it did in 2016
Until August of 2017, the Government authorized 710 million euros of appropriations to be used. In comparison, during the same period of last year, only 104 million euros had been released.
Mário Centeno, the Portuguese Finance Minister, has raised the ante. Until August of this year, Centeno authorized the release of seven times more appropriations than in the same period of last year. Even so, the minister decided to keep almost 1,200 million euros. The numbers were disclosed by the Portuguese Parliament.
We should recall that appropriations are a sort of forced saving: an expense is approved by the Parliament, but the allocated money is held by the Finance Ministry and their execution becomes dependent upon the approval of its head minister, Mário Centeno.
António Costa’s executive started out this year’s budgetary execution with an even higher appropriations’ amount than what had been used in 2016 — a year in which these supplies were already considered a record. In 2016, appropriations ascended to 1,734 million euros; this year, the allocated money that must be spend only after the Finance minister’s approval was 1,881 million euros.
However, the release rhythm of those amounts of money is being very different: until August 2016, Mário Centeno allowed 104 million euros to be used, while in the same eight months of this year, 710 million euros have been released. It is a 459 million euros’ difference, in line with what the PM António Costa had stated this Wednesday: “This year, we released more than 500 million euros’ of appropriations than in the same period of last year, because budgetary execution is going well — fortunately“.
According to the data disclosed by the Portuguese Parliament, 190 million euros of appropriations have been released for the Infrastructures and Planning programme, who had the highest amount of appropriations (459 million euros). The education and schooling administration programmes also had 180 million euros of appropriations, but only 40 million remain under the Finance minister’s purview.
The Portuguese Government assures the decrease in appropriations does not necessarily mean an increase in the expenses from central administration, since it is influenced by other factors such as the evolution of budgets and the degree of its execution. Nonetheless, the Executive acknowledges that expenses from Central Administration did increase 1.8% until July because of Christmas subsidies and expenses with pensions, as well as Social Security transfers.
