António Costa confident deficit below 2.5% – Express

The Portuguese Prime Minister, António Costa, stated today confident that the budget deficit this year will be “below 2.5%”, based on the “huge improvement” recorded in the first half and “several months “still ahead.

” we have permanent data of budget execution and demonstrating is that they are in line with what we had designed. So we are confident that [the deficit] not only clearly will be below 3% , as we would be below 2.5% which set in the European Union, “Costa said on the sidelines of a visit to the delegation of Portuguese companies, from Saturday to Tuesday, participate in Micam footwear fair in Milan, Italy.

in the statement of budget execution until July, the Lusa agency had access on Friday, the Technical Unit of budget Support (UTAO) estimates that in the first half of this year, the budget deficit has situated on 2.7% of GDP [gross domestic product], in national accounts, an “improvement over the same period,” but warns “budgetary pressures” in the second quarter.
UTAO estimates that the deficit of administrations public in national accounts (which account for Brussels) “was between 2.2% and 3.2%” of GDP by June.

confirming to now advanced projection by independent technicians who support parliament, between January and June this year, “the deficit is expected to have recorded a decrease of 1.9 percentage points of GDP over the same period last year”, after having decreased by 2.3 percentage points year on year in the first three months of the year

According to Antonio Costa, the note UTAO recognizes “that there was a huge improvement” between the first half of 2015 and the first six months of this year, pointing out “what is obvious.”: “what there is a second half still to go and we have several months ahead of UTAO the recommendation is that any doctor will give us all “
.” ‘do not abuse the sweets, but this will harm your health.’ The UTAO says and ran the first half and that it needs to run well the second half to reach the end of the year at the point you want. And we get, “he claimed, basing this belief in a” matter of trust and comfort. “