Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa promulgated the State Budget for 2022 this Friday, but not before leaving many criticisms and warnings to the socialist government. In the note published on the Presidency page, the Head of State goes so far as to say that “the State Budget for 2022, received for promulgation, suffers from obvious and, perhaps, unavoidable limitations.”
In total, the President of the Republic lists seven weaknesses of the current document. First, a test: “Instead of coming into force on January 1, 2022, for known reasons, it can only be applied from July of this year.” A reference from Marcelo to the fact that the first Budget was dropped by the left and led to early elections.
Secondly, Marcelo continues, “we are still living with a time of pandemic that has become endemic.” More specifically, it was “reworked and debated in times of war, it is based on a changing economic framework with unpredictable contours, as unpredictable are the timing and shape of the end of the war and its effects on inflation, investment and growth” .
In fourth and fifth place, the president recalls that “the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) will only know sensible application from the second half of 2022” and that “the adaptation of Societies and Public Administrations to the new time – post-pandemic and post-war – It is yet to be defined.”
Both the delay in the application of the PRR and the decentralization process have motivated some reservations on the part of the President of the Republic, and in the text that is now made public Marcelo speaks of them again. “Administrative modernization, also linked to changes in qualification, digital and energy, has a waiting period. An example of this is decentralization, delayed in its process, and which still raises questions of substance, financing and time and form of implementation”, says the Head of State.
“In short, the 2022 Budget turns out to be a set of intentions in a context of unpredictable evolution, condemned to make a precarious bridge to another Budget – that of 2023 – whose elaboration has already begun and which is expected to be applied more certainty and fewer questions about the end of the pandemic, the end of the war, the costs of one and the other in the lives of Nations and peoples”, concludes Marcelo.
Despite all this, Marcelo justifies his decision by arguing that “it is preferable to have a frame of reference, even if it is tentative and precarious, finished a month ago, than to maintain the previous framework, finished more than six months ago.”
In addition, he continues, “it is preferable not to sacrifice more people and families who have been waiting since January for social measures, even if they are small, but important for them.”
In addition, “it is preferable to concentrate on the 2023 Budget -in its preparation and debate- the matters that are or may be on hold -from the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Plan to other European funds, to decentralization, to the vision clearer about the costs of the pandemic and the war and its duration.
And, concludes the President of the Republic, “it is better not to remain in the past, returning to a discussion about the 2022 Budget, a bridging Budget, for half a year, postponing its implementation for another month, and looking to the future and, on top of it, , openly debate the possible and desirable reality”.
Source: Observadora
