From budget surplus to new poor reality By TPN/Lusa, in News · 30-12-2020 12:00:00 · 1 Comments
The year began with an unprecedented budget surplus in democracy, but it took only a few months for a new poor reality created by the Covid-19 pandemic to turn the positive balance of public accounts into a memory of the past. The state budget for 2020 was approved as early as January, with an unprecedented budget surplus of 0.2 percent in a country accustomed to having accounts in the red .
But the pandemic that hit Portugal in March immediately compromised the brief financial relief by directly affecting the main cause of the positive balance: tourism. Just a week after the first two cases of confirmed infection in the country were known, the Algarve had already recorded 60 percent cancellations of hotel booking