Government acting quickly to present draft State Budget five days after coming into office

  • Lusa
  • 13 April 2022

"We were concerned to deliver the Budget proposal as quickly as possible so that the country can recover normal functioning of the [public] administration," said the new Finance Minister.

The Finance Minister on Wednesday stressed that the draft State Budget proposal for 2022 is being presented five days after the Government entered full office, acting “quickly” in the face of high fuel prices and keeping “correct accounts”.

These positions were conveyed by Fernando Medina moments after he formally delivered to the speaker of parliament, Augusto Santos Silva, the Government’s proposed State Budget for 2022.

In a brief statement to journalists, with the Minister of State and Parliamentary Affairs, Ana Catarina Mendes, by his side, the Finance Minister pointed out that the Budget proposal entered Parliament only “five days after the Government was fully functional and little more than a week after the new executive took office”.

“We were concerned to deliver the Budget proposal as quickly as possible so that the country can recover normal functioning of the [public] administration and so that the measures to support families, businesses, younger people and pensioners in this sensitive moment that we are experiencing come into force as quickly as possible,” he said.

Fernando Medina argued that the State Budget presents “essential responses in mitigating the price of fuel and for hundreds of thousands of pensioners, who with the approval of the diploma will have their pensions increased with retroactive effect to the beginning of January this year.