Deficit stems from measures taken by previous government without budgetary allocation
The ongoing wrangle over “how much money was spent by the last administration” ratcheted up yesterday when minister for Labour, Solidarity and Social security Maria do Rosário Palma Ramalho revealed she had found a €287 million deficit in the social security solidarity sub-system.
Ms Palma Ramalho was speaking in the parliamentary Labour Committee in the first statutory hearing since she took office in April.
She said: “Instead of the promised surplus, we found a budget deficit of €287 million in the solidarity system as a result of various measures taken by the previous (Socialist) government in the first quarter (of this year) with no budget allocation”.
This is not the first time the outgoing government’s eleventh hour spending has been brought to the nation’s attention, a posteriori. Finance minister Joaquim Miranda Sarmento accused the previous administration of having approved €2.5 billion in expenses in the first quarter of the year – almost half this amount AFTER the Socialists’ election defeat (ie when the party knew they would be replaced…)
A lot of indignation then followed – former finance minister Fernando Medina giving interviews saying Miranda Sarmento was blowing everything out of proportion – but now this: another sizeable deficit in a ministry that, by dint of recent measures in the solidarity complement for the elderly (CSI), has even more claimants than it did when AD took over the running of the country.
Ms Palma Ramalho added that when she started as minister, “there was no coordination” within the ministry of programmes funded by the PRR (Brussels’ funded plan for recovery and resilience). Programmes were managed in total autonomy by various ministry bodies. As a result, a monitoring team was created “as a matter of urgency” – and the result, in just three months, has been “already considerable” – meaning increases in efficiency/ performance, she said.
The minister’s speech was essentially an ‘eye-opener’ on the perceived failings of the last administration: delays in drawing up orders and diplomas, a lack of information on serious situations like that of Santa Casa da Misericórdia and international cooperation expenditure – some of which had not been settled since 2021, writes Lusa.
The only ‘positive’ in the news of this latest deficit was that because it refers to a ‘non-contributory subsystem’ it does not reflect the overall situation of Social Security. It simply means there is a large shortfall in an area that is designed to combat poverty.
Source material: LUSA
