Joaquim Miranda Sarmento, Minister of Finance, announced this Tuesday, March 24, that the 2025 budget surplus, which will be released this Thursday by the National Statistics Institute, will be a “good surprise and good news for the country”.
The Government predicted a surplus of 0.3% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for 2025, but the minister had already signaled that it would be higher than expected.
In a speech at the Presentation of the Strategic Council of Banco Português de Fomento, in Oeiras, Lisbon, Miranda Sarmento highlighted that last year’s budget balance “will be far above the entities’ forecasts and what was expected”.
The minister pointed out that this number “will be a good surprise and good news for the country”, which will also have a ” carry-over positive for 2026″.
If, on the one hand, the 2025 surplus “makes the margin less narrow”, on the other, the two events that happened in the first quarter of this year, the storms and the war in Iran, “have made the margin narrow again”.
Even so, Miranda Sarmento highlighted that the balance of public accounts “is fundamental for the country”, and, “without failing to help the economy and families”, the Government will maintain this principle.
As for economic growth, the government official assumed that the storms and the situation in Iran “greatly condition what 2026 will be”, but the government’s expectation was for GDP growth above 2%.
“We will see the impact that the storms had in the 1st quarter and, the longer the conflict lasts, what impact there will be”, he assured.
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