PSD force postponement of hearing to the NSA requested by the PS

Andm cause is the update, by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), of the number of residents in Portugal to 11,424,031 people, thanks to the accounting of 1,597,539 foreign people.

The PS requested the hearing of the statistical institute to understand the statistical, economic and budgetary implications of the resident population estimates of 2025, with the revision of the series from 2021 to 2024.

At today’s meeting of the Committee on Budget, Finance and Public Administration (COFAP), the PSD Member Alberto Teixeira made a powerful request from the Social Democratic bench to postpone the vote on this point and three others on the committee’s agenda.

With this, the vote on the hearing of the NSA is postponed to the next meeting of the COFAP.

The same will happen with regard to the definition of the methodology of a draft law of Aquida on the 50% exemption in IRS from incomes obtained by emigrants returning to Portugal, of an PS project to change the IRS Code regarding the taxation of emigrant pensioners returning to the country, and of a PAN resolution project to create a second Return Program.

On Monday, following the submission of the request, the deputy of the PS Carlos Pereira told Lusa that the objective is that the public debate on population estimates be done “with prudence and rigor” and not based on “very primary accounts” made by rulers on population data.

The PS wants the NSA to explain not only to the Assembly of the Republic, but also to the general population, which “methodology used and what difficulties it had”.

“The objective is to clarify the situation, to be able to analyze it with prudence and rigor and to underline the full respect for the independence of the statistical authority, the INE. (…) The last two weeks have been very fertile from the point of view of conclusions on what was the disclosure of estimates of resident population in 2025 and therefore we believe that it is important to create conditions for everyone to understand what is happening,” he explained.

According to the estimates updated by the INE on 22 June, the population in Portugal increased from 11,387,222 on 31 December 2024 to 11,424,031 persons on the same date of 2025, and the value of 2024 was revised upwards following the review of annual estimates from 2021 to 2024.

The INE confirmed at the time that the change “has an impact on various statistical operations of the INE, namely on the calibration (extrapolation) of the results of sample surveys, especially the Employment Survey”, implying a reassessment of the national accounts.

The European Union statistical office (EU), Eurostat, confirmed to Lusa on 29 June that it will recalculate previously published indicators such as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita when it receives new Portuguese data.