Opinion on the Annual Progress Report 2025

The Portuguese Public Finance Council (CFP) publishes today it’s Opinion on the Annual Progress Report 2025 underlying the National Medium-Term Fiscal-Structural Plan for 2025-2028 (MTP), presented by the XXIV Constitutional Government in the XVI Legislature. The drafting of this Opinion was requested by the Ministry of Finance in March 2025.

This Opinion concludes that:

• The forecast of 2.4 per cent growth in 2025 appears likely, but not prudent.
   
• The CFP calculated a 10.1% growth in net expenditure before discretionary revenue measures (MDR) in 2024, higher than the 9.0% implicit in the MTP.
   
• Taking discretionary revenue measures into account raises the growth in net expenditure to between 11.6 and 12.5 per cent. The approved path considered a growth of 11.8 per cent in this expenditure.
   
• The difficulties in estimating net expenditure arising from the quantification of discretionary measures in terms of revenue reflected in this Opinion reinforce the need for a protocol between the CFP and the Ministry of Finance.

The CFP also reiterates the need to adopt a new national rule to supplement the European framework.

Date of last update: 02/05/2025