Red Card for Sarmento: It is the one that dreams the highest in the EU

European Union distrusts the government’s economic predictions. Only France, Bulgaria, Estonia and Luxembourg have risky projections than Portugal.

The macroeconomic and budgetary forecasts of Portugal to 2025 are among the most contested within the European Union, according to a recent report by the European network of independent budgetary institutions.

The document, based on response from 32 entities from 26 EU Member States (besides the United Kingdom), points out that only France, Bulgaria, Estonia and Luxembourg have risky projections than Portugal, notes the Jornal de Negócios this Wednesday.

In Portugal, the Public Finance Council (CFP) analyzed the goals presented by the Ministry of Finance, led by Joaquim Miranda Sarmento.

Despite considering plausible predictions for inflation and interest expense, the CFP has classified as unlikely other essential goals, such as the rate of GDP growth of 2.4%o 3.4% increase in liquid expenseo Budget surplus of 0.3% of GDP and DESIGN OF PUBLIC DEBT TO 91.5%.

Thus, Portugal currently has a negative assessment in four of the six dimensions analyzed in the European report, with red card in expectations for GDP and expense and yellow in balance and public debt.

But there are those who are worse. France, for example, fails in all forecasts evaluated, in a context of political crisis and degradation of public finances. Bulgaria, Estonia and Luxembourg also face reserves in their projections, achieving only punctual validations in areas such as inflation or interest expense.

On the other side of the table, Netherlands and Greece have the most credible projectionswith high probabilities of compliance in the main budgetary and macroeconomic dimensions. Spain and Sweden appear in an intermediate positionwith about half of the predictions to be considered very likely.

Just 15 of the 26 institutions Independent budgetary budgetary believes that national expense goals for 2025 are likely to be achieved. In the medium term, until 2028, this confidence is further reduced, with only 39% to maintain positive expectations.

“The results trace a mixed scenario: If many independent budgetary institutions see national budgetary and macroeconomic predictions such as plausible, confidence in the capacity of Member States meet the new reference of liquid expense is more limited, ”says the publication, according to the same newspaper.

The report ends with a warning: limited confidence in predictions, combined with slow legislative adaptation, can compromise the budget credibility of the EU.