Mário Centeno sees budget deficit below 3% in 2021
"In 2021, the budget deficit will be very close to 3%, possibly already complying with the budgetary treaties, that is, below 3%" of GDP, the governor of the Bank of Portugal said on Wednesday.
Instead of the 4.3% of GDP forecast by António Costa’s government, last year’s budget deficit is expected to be below 3% of GDP, anticipates Mário Centeno, former finance minister and current governor of the Bank of Portugal. If confirmed, the figure will be below the EU budget rules limit, which was suspended in 2021 and will stay this way through 2022.
“In 2021, the budget deficit will be very close to 3%, possibly already complying with the budgetary treaties, that is, below 3%” of GDP, the governor of the Bank of Portugal said on Wednesday at a conference organised by Jornal de Negócios and Millennium BCP. The official government target for the deficit in 2021 was 4.3%, but the current finance minister João Leão has already assumed that the final figure will have been lower.
Cited by Jornal de Negócios, former Finance Minister Mário Centeno also said that “in 2022, the budget balance meets all the conditions to be below 1%” of GDP. For this year, in the original State Budget for 2022 (OE 2022), the government had forecast a deficit of 3.2% of GDP.
Statistics Portugal (INE) will release the official figure for the 2021 budget deficit on March 25.
