The proposed budget for 2025 will respect the aim of reducing the tax burden on families, young people and companies, the Portuguese government said on Thursday.
In the government’s summary of the document presented to parliament on Thursday, the PSD/CDS-PP government points out that the main objectives of the 2025 budget are to “recover, reform and relaunch Portugal with responsibility”.
“The government, through the instrument for implementing public policies that are the budget, continues, in 2025, the fundamental vectors that have guided its government action since 2 April 2024,” according to the text.
In terms of recovery, the PSD/CDS-PP government said that the budget proposal “extends the government’s efforts to restore the welfare state” and “reverses the trajectory of degradation” that it believes occurred during the eight years of socialist rule.
“The objective is clear: to provide everyone with accessible, quality public services – in education, health, mobility, security, culture, as well as re-establishing a relationship of trust between the citizen user and the Public Administration,” it said, highlighting the agreements reached with various special civil service careers.
The government also highlights as a “crucial dimension” the protection of the most vulnerable “by improving pensions and increasing the solidarity supplement for the elderly” and “by reinforcing crèches, in addition to the Health emergency plan.”
“On the other hand, we have regulated immigration, which was out of control, introducing stricter criteria so that those who come to us have decent conditions in which to live and work,” the government summary added.
In taxation, “the budget maintains and increases the government’s objective of reducing the tax burden on families, young people and companies, which is imperative, not only to improve the income level of Portuguese but also to make the economy more competitive”.
“Only increasing company productivity can allow them to pay better wages and offer better jobs. Only a more competitive economy will allow us to retain our young people, attract back the many who have emigrated in recent years and become a country of hope and future,” it adds.
The government’s summary emphasises that submitting the National Medium-Term Structural Budget Programme 2025-2028 to the European Commission “is a further sign of the government’s commitment to macroeconomic and budgetary stability”.
On Thursday, Finance Minister Joaquim Miranda Sarmento presented to the Speaker of Parliament the proposed budget for 2025, the first of the minority PSD/CDS government led by Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, which has yet to secure its general viability – the vote is scheduled for 31 March.
(Sara Madeira, edited by Maria de Deus Rodrigues | Lusa.pt)
Source: euractiv.com
