Portugal registers a 1% budget surplus in the first half of the year

The Portuguese Statistics Office (INE) has disclosed the national accounts on the first half of 2025 and the year 2024.

In the first half of 2025, the country registered a budget surplus of 1% of GDP, maintaining the value registered in the same time period in the previous year, which after an upwards adjustment for the 2024 GDP was also 1%. 

The continuous budget surplus despite the tax relief and review of Public Administration careers comes from a prudent and solid budget policy followed by Portugal, whereby the Government has a forecast of a 0.3% of GDP surplus for this year. 

Of note is that the real GDP growth was reviewed 0.2 pp upwards to 2.1%. 

INE also revised the amount of public debt in 2024, which reached 93.6% of GDP. Please note that in 2023, public debt was 96.9%, a number that was also reviewed downwards. As such, Portugal cut its public debt by around 3.3 percentage point (pp) of GDP in line with the Government’s goal.

These results, due to households’ and companies’ capabilities, have enabled a boost in confidence in the Portugal’s budgetary and financial situation, as the recent credit rating upgrades by S&P and Fitch testify. Yet, this budgetary balance and public debt reduction cycle must remain uninterrupted so Portugal can get to the end of the decade with a public debt below 80% of PIB, strengthening market and investor confidence in our country.