The State Budget that is being negotiated, for the year 2025, is a budget that, “For the first time in as many years as I can remember, taxes are not being raised.“, highlighted this Monday the Minister of Finance, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, adding that the Government does not even plan to update certain taxes to the inflation rate.
The statement was made at the opening of a conference of the Superintendency of Insurance and Pension Funds (ASF) dedicated to the role of the insurance sector in managing the risks of natural catastrophes. As noted at the end of Miranda Sarmento’s speech, this organization has not yet delivered to the Ministry of Finance the plan for the creation of a seismic fund in Portugal, a work that should have been completed in March.
As seismic risk is one of the main risks affecting Portugal, “the government has been following” the debate on this issue and “waiting for work”which is being developed by the ASF, said Miranda Sarmento.
The president of the ASF, Margarida Corrêa de Aguiar, responded, in her speech, that “perspective soonthe delivery to the Government of a “first document with concrete proposals” on how risks of this nature should be prevented, between the public sector and the private sector.
“The creation of a national seismic risk coverage system, which will include a specifically dedicated fund, could represent a first step towards the subsequent expansion of the system to cover climate risks,” said the president of the ASF, adding that “without prejudice of technical studies that must still be carried out, the ASF will point in this direction, in the report that it will deliver to the Government, particularly in terms of the proposed institutional model for governance of the seismic fund, in order to allow future management. extended to other catastrophic risks.”
The Government is still waiting for the ASF plan to create a seismic fund in Portugal, where only one in five houses has insurance
Before this final statement on the topic analyzed at the conference, Joaquim Miranda Sarmento once again gave a quick portrait of the State Budget proposal whose voting in the specialty begins next Friday.
“This is a budget that, for the first time that I can remember, does not increase any taxes“, reaffirmed the Minister of Finance, highlighting that the IRS will be reduced, which will lead to a collection of billions less than last year (in public accounting), among young IRS, the updating of the levels and the changes made this year. Furthermore, the Government wants to “lower the CRI by one percentage point” and, the minister highlighted, there is no update of several taxes to the expected inflation rate – which contrasts, says the minister – with what has happened in the last years of Government. . socialist.
Furthermore, Miranda Sarmento reiterated the objective of lowering public debt to less than 90% by 2026, since in the new European standards that is the most relevant level – “90% is the new 60% [de Maastricht]the minister stated. “We will continue to reduce public debt in a sustained manner and this is fundamental for a country that still has a very high public debt,” he guaranteed.
On the other hand, the Minister of Finance highlighted that, in recent years, “we have seen a strong degradation of public services, with low levels of service and many shortcomings”, hence the “priority” of the Government is “recovery of the welfare state“, which also implies “valuing people’s professional careers and salary levels.”
The minister added that “we need to attract workers to all sectors of activity.” “There is no sector in Portugal whose first complaint is not the lack of labor: agriculture, industry, services…”, highlighted Miranda Sarmento, arguing that it is necessary to have “regulated and integrated immigration policies, respecting human dignity, but We also need to retain and attract our young people.”
Source: Observadora
