Today MPs will hear from former minister Fernando Medina on debt reduction

Former finance minister and current PS lawmaker Fernando Medina will hear in parliament on Tuesday the question of reducing public debt in 2023 after the Budget Technical Support Group considered the reduction to be “artificial.”

These hearings in the Committee on Budget, Finance and Public Administration were requested by the CDS-PP and received the votes of all parliamentary groups present, including the PS.

The intention to comply with this request was announced last week by the leader of the centrist parliamentary bench, Paulo Nuncio, who accused the previous government, in which Fernando Medina was finance minister, of “artificially reducing” the debt with “pension money”.

On this occasion, Paulo Nuncio said that the Budget Technical Assistance Unit (UTAO) “warned that the debt reduction carried out by the socialist government in 2023 was simply artificial” and that “it was only done using money from the Social Security Financial Stabilization Fund” . and Caixa Geral de Aposentações.”

In a report on market conditions, public debt and external debt until March, published on April 10, UTAO believes that the significant increase in public debt consolidation ratios in 2023 is the result of budget surpluses and a “conscious search for investment in securities,” indicating that such an increase investments by organic units in debt instruments will in some cases be the result of “simple management options”, and there are also cases where “financial management options were driven by government guidelines”.

A document from the organization led by Ruy Baleira classifies the reduction in public debt as “artificial.”

The public debt ratio in 2023 was 99.1% of gross domestic product (GDP) and in nominal terms decreased by 9.3 billion euros compared to the previous year, to 263.1 billion euros.