The Portuguese Parliament gave the green light this Tuesday in a first vote to the budget project of the center-right Government of Prime Minister Luís Montenegro, which contemplates investments in public housing and tax cuts.
The draft was approved today with the votes in favor of the two government partners, the conservative Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the Christian Democrat CDS-PP, and the abstention of the Socialist Party (PS), the animalist PAN and the regionalist JPP. The far-right Chega, Liberal Initiative (IL), the environmentalist Livre, the Portuguese Communist Party (PCP) and the Left Bloc (BE) voted against.
In this sense, the leader of the PS, José Luís Carneiro, announced on Monday that his party was going to abstain for the sake of “political stability” in the country.
The text will now go to a legislative commission for possible amendments before the final vote in plenary scheduled for November 27.
Housing is a key issue
For his part, Luis Montenegro defended this Monday the budget project with housing as an “absolute priority” of his Executive and without increasing taxes for the second consecutive year. “We are going to make currently empty public properties available for rent to the middle class through public-private collaborations,” said Montenegro, who highlighted that apart from public housing, his Executive presents a series of “ambitious measures” to increase the supply of houses for the middle class and the reduction of VAT in the construction of non-luxury properties.
The text specifically contemplates more than 2,152 million euros allocated to housing to increase the supply of public properties and mobilize those that are State assets for real estate projects, in addition to a reduction in VAT in the construction sector from 23 to 6%.
