In financial terms, that amounts to an additional €449.7 million flowing into state coffers with the DGO stating this “consolidated the trend for rising fiscal revenues that began in early 2013."


This result was primarily boosted in the first third of this year by the take earned from higher returns from Value Added Tax, up 9.2% to total €4.846 billion over this period that the report in turn attributed to “the recovery of economic activities and the rising effectiveness of new measures designed to combat fraud and fiscal invasion.”


However, there were also robust rises in other forms of indirect taxation with vehicle sale duty surging 26.2% to €185.7 million and with road tax up 10.4% to chip in with €95.1 million.


Meanwhile, the government’s own forecasts for its taxation revenues already look adrift from reality after the first four months of 2015 with the amount remaining broadly unchanged year-on-year at €4.9 billion.


To begin with, there was a 1.5% fall in personal taxation receipts over the period, totalling €4.3 billion, and contrasting with the annualised 4% rise forecast by the government all the while corporate tax revenues advanced 3.6% to total €541 million and against the annualised decline of 17.7% expected in the 2015 state budget.


Furthermore, austerity era extraordinary levies on the banking and energy sectors brought in €24.9 million and €23.9 million respectively.


However, none of this was enough to drag the accounts out of the red with the state running a four monthly deficit of €1.55 billion in the period through to the end of April even while that was a €226.3 million improvement on this time last year.


Nevertheless, should the state’s outgoings be stripped of their debt management component, the four-month period saw a primary balance amounting to €880.9 million.


Among those taking receipt of the Portuguese state’s interest payments were the troika of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund that garnered €534.9 million, up 31.9% due to interest rate payments on the country’s 10th chunk of bailout funding now kicking in.


As the state shuffles to realign its debt liabilities to take better advantage of the current period of low interest, the authorities paid out some €2.234 billion in interest and other charges against the €1.692 paid out in the same period in 2014.