The statement on the Portuguese public debt appears in a publication circulating on Facebook which, with irony, refers to being part of “the series ‘pay, unhappy taxpayer’. The user predicts that, by the end of this year, the public debt will reach 280 billion euros and that this will exceed the value of the public debt recorded at the end of the Pedro Passos Coelho government by 60 billion.

“In six years, annual public spending increased by more than 15,000 million euros and at the end of the year the public debt will reach a record value of 280,000 million euros, which represents an additional 60,000 million euros compared to the existing debt at the end of the year. of the government of Passos Coelho”, says this user. And yet?

The public debt calculated by the Bank of Portugal in March this year was 276,000 million euros, from the perspective of Maastricht (which is what counts for Brussels, including liabilities in cash and deposits, debt securities and loans from public administrations). public). Compared to the previous month, the debt “increased by 1,200 million euros,” the BoP said in the statistical information note for March, specifying that the “increase basically reflected issues of debt securities amounting to 0,900 million euros and the reception of a new tranche of the loan from the European Commission (500 million euros) under the European instrument SURE”.

Therefore, the most current value found: 276 billion. Now let’s go back to 2015, the year in which Passos Coelho ended his duties as prime minister (which happened in November) and at the end of which the public debt stood, also according to data from the Bank of Portugal, at 231,000 million euros. . .

The difference between the value recorded then and now, after six years of PS government, is 41,000 million euros. This is the value of the debt accrued in this period. Less than the 60,000 million that the publication mentions, which, in fact, even makes the comparison with a forecast (whose origin is not mentioned) for the end of this year.

So let’s get to that comparison. In the publication, the value of the debt forecast for the end of the year is 280,000 million euros. A figure above the Government forecast (Banco de Portugal does not make forecasts for this indicator), which at the end of the year points to a public debt of 120.7% of GDP, that is, around 272,000 million euros . The value referred to is very close to that projected by the European Commission, which at the end of last year estimated that in 2022 Portugal’s public debt will be 123.9% of GDP (about 280,000 million euros).

Whether the value of the debt at the end of the year is that provided by the Government or that provided by the Facebook user, the difference with respect to 2015 is never 60,000 million. If there is a debt of about 280,000 million euros at the end of this year, as this Facebook user predicts, the difference for 2015 is 45,000 million euros.

The Observer also analyzed the first sentence of the statement made, in the case of annual public spending and how it increased by “more than 15,000 million euros” compared to that registered at the end of 2015. In 2021, the annual spending of Public Administrations calculated by the Bank of Portugal amounted to 101,727 million euros and, in 2015, to 86,708 million. The difference is 15,019 million euros, that is, it corresponds to what was said in the publication.

conclusion

The analyzed publication makes a forecast on public debt at the end of this year, placing its author at 280,000 million euros (above the Government’s forecast, for example). He affirms that it will be 60 billion more than what was recorded after the Passos Coelho government. The public debt in December 2015, after the Passos era, was 235,000 million euros, so the difference with the forecast made by this Facebook user is 15,000 million euros below the referred value (the so-called 60,000 million ).

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