The parliamentary leader of the Social Democratic Party said this Monday that the government of António Costa is following a strategy that has brought “good results without cuts” and focused criticism on former Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho, accusing him of betting on “ impoverishment and emigration.”
At the end of his question to the Prime Minister on the first day of the discussion of most of the proposals for the state budget for 2024 in the Assembly of the Republic, Eurico Brillante Díaz recalled that Passos Coelho, when he was no longer Prime Minister, expressed himself “ready to vote for the PS, PKP or Block de Esquerda if the strategy works.”
“I have the impression that the PS is on the verge of winning a new voter, I really think that we will have a new voter, because if MP Passos Coelho keeps his word, the Portuguese left will have a new voter,” he added, noting , that the former prime minister was “very much applauded” at the time by the current PSD president, Luis Montenegro.
During his speech, the parliamentary leader of the Socialist Party addressed mainly the SDP, which he associated with a government “that has cut pensions, wages and made huge tax increases,” and argued that by talking about “cuts,” the Social Democrats are beginning to “lose this dispute is because the Portuguese have a memory.”
On the contrary, he stated that the current government presents a state budget “that increases wages, increases pensions, increases the national minimum wage, which reduces taxes”, with a “triple balance”, fiscal, in external accounts and with “full employment” . .
The state budget proposal, which guarantees approval by the PS’s parliamentary majority, will be voted on Tuesday after the end of the general debate.
The final global vote is scheduled for November 29.
In the macroeconomic scenario on which the budget proposal is based, the government forecasts that gross domestic product (GDP) will grow by 2.2% in 2023 and 1.5% in 2024, with inflation falling to 5.3% this year and 3.3%. in 2024.
The government led by Antonio Costa aims to achieve a budget surplus of 0.8% of GDP in 2023 and 0.2% in 2024, as well as reduce the public debt ratio to 103% of GDP this year and to 98.9% in 2024 year.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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