In its report ‘Budget development to the end of the third quarter of 2017’, released on Monday, the CFP examines the budget outturn from the first nine months as already released by the National Statistics Institute (INE) and information already known about the fourth quarter. On that basis, it states, it anticipates “a deficit of less than 1.4% of GDP for the whole of 2017.”

The government has already said that the 2017 deficit is set to be smaller than the 1.4% pencilled into the 2018 state budget – already a reduction from the 1.5% originally foreseen. The prime minister, António Costa, said last week that he expects the 2017 deficit to turn out to be around 1.2% of GDP.

The CFP has now fallen into line with the government’s current official estimate, while not stating how much lower than 1.4% it expects the deficit to be. It also stresses that the estimate excludes any impact on the accounts of the capital injection into state bank Caixa Geral de Depósitos (CGD), whose classification is still being assesses by the statistics authorities of Portugal and the European Union.