Maria Luís Albuquerque was reacting in an interview to comments by de Sousa to the effect that the budget results of the current, Socialist government are sustainable.
“The President of the Republic is not an independent and technical entity,” Albquerque said. “I wouldn’t cite the President of the Republic in this context. He isn’t because he isn’t supposed to be.
“Note that I was talking about the UTAO [parliament’s Technical Budget Support Unit], the Council of Public Finances, the ratings agencies and the European Commission or the International Monetary Fund,” she said.
In the view of the former minister, these “are entities [that are] independent of the government and the majority [in parliament] and which analyse them; they have perspective and a vision over the budget results and more.”
The interview is to be broadcast in full by TSF radio and printed in the Diário de Notícias and Jornal de Notícias newspapers on Saturday.
Portugal’s Socialist government, which came to power in November 2015, has won praise from many for reducing the public sector budget deficit to 2 percent of gross domestic product last year, but has also drawn criticism from some observers for achieving this partly through the use of one-off measures, while curtailing public investment.