Centeno says 35 hours of the cost will be offset by savings – Express

The Minister of Portuguese Finance, Mario Centeno said Tuesday in New York that the costs of the passage of some civil servants to a weekly schedule of 35 hours will be offset by savings in other sectors.

“it will be necessary to compensate for the sector costs that may be involved with savings in other sectors. The overall cost, the total expenditure with the public administration, will have to be zero, “he said.

The replacement of the 35 weekly hours of work for the civil service was approved in general in Parliament, with the votes in favor of the left, at the beginning of the month.
Centeno says “the government program provided an implementation [this measure] without increasing overall staff costs” and that this objective will be met.

“There will be costs in some sectors already identified and said in parliament. The estimate for the area in which the costs will be significant in some professions in health, is EUR 27 million in the six months ahead. These EUR 27 million must be found as part of the staff costs in public administration and also in the health sector, “said the official.

Mario Centeno believes this is possible with the current budget and ensures that his ministry already detected some opportunities.

“by May, the state sector, the staff costs are falling 0.4 percent. In the budget, is expected to grow 3.1 percent, which means that we have savings in this area that will have to make other measures, “he said.

The head is in New York to participate in Pan European Days, an initiative of the Portuguese Stock Exchange that promotes a hundred meetings between investors and companies in the PSI 20 (the main index of the Lisbon Stock Exchange) in New York and Boston, as well as a set of lectures.