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The PS will try this Thursday to stop the reduction of tolls approved in Parliament during the votes on the specialty of the State Budgets for 2021 that took place on Wednesday. The PSD proposal received the support of parties of the right and left, leaving the PS alone. Parliament technicians estimate that the State will lose up to 82 million euros in revenue next year, but the Government is concerned about the hole of 1.5 billion euros planned for the life of the concessions.
The toll rates in SCUT do Interior, Algarve, Costa de Prata, Grande Porto and Norte Litoral will be reduced by 50%, which can be 75% in the case of clean cars. The “ok” to this replacement resulted from the approval of part of two proposals to change the Social Democrats who had votes in favor of the PSD, PCP, BE and Chega, the abstention of the PAN and votes against the PS and IL. In this way, what the Government usually calls a negative majority was formed, as it went against the will of the executive.
During the debate, it was the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Finance, João Nuno Mendes, to warn of the risk of approval of the proposal. The official considered that this reduction represents an “extraordinary expense” for public accounts, which the executive estimates at 1500 million euros over the life of the concessions. The permanent nature of the decision, which for the Government has nothing to do with the response to the covid, aggravates the concern. On Wednesday, to close the debate, the Secretary of State for Budgets, Cláudia Joaquim, defended that “it will be irresponsible to approve measures with permanent costs.”
That is why this Thursday, the day of the final vote on the Budget, the PS takes the issue to the stage of talks to try to stop this reduction, the PUBLIC learned. In the fourth, after a complex vote on the subject, the Government continued to analyze how the details of the new rule would be, in which one of the open points was the date of entry into force of the price reduction, which may be January , in July, as provided for by PSD’s proposal, as not all parts of the proposals were approved.
This negative majority is added to those that Finance has already counted for the first two days of voting in the specialty. As of Monday, 48 amendments had been approved through a negative coalition, with an estimated cost for EO 2021 of at least 60 million euros.
