Portugal's Court of Auditors has stated that the government has been overstating the results of state reforms and that 'intent has been confused with results.'
Regarding the reduction in the number of state workers, there are signs that show that the recent reforms actually have increased the number of workers employed by the state in some areas where reductions have been claimed.
In the riveting document, "Monitoring Mechanisms for Financial to Portugal" which assesses the even more gripping "Reduction Plan and Central Improving of the State" the Court of Auditors, which is responsible for auditing Portugal's public accounts, began by stating that the reform programme, despite the Government's guarantee that ministries have developed deep introspection with regard to saving costs, dispayed no evidence of departmental cost analysis nor could the Court of Auditors find any results of net cost savings.
The analysis continues with deft criticism of the way the government’s figures were gathered which, according to the Court of Auditors, led to unclear and inconsistent criteria being set by the Government with the intent to put a positive spin on reported figures.
The Court of Auditors said that some government cost centres had been left out when they should clearly have been included such as defense, hospitals and universities. This had the affect of excluding about 80% of General Government spending.
In evaluating the results, the Government has been highly selective, showing the number of committees and structures falling by 40% when the reality was 19%, and the number of employees falling by 27% when the reality was a fall of 14% only.
The Court of Auditors has come under a heavy barrage of criticism by the Pedro Passos Coelho government and this sort of exposée of alleged government fiddling will do nothing to mend the fences that recently have been broken.
By threatening to disband the Court of Auditors, or at least change its role in Portuguese political life, the government appears to have stiffened the resolve of the Court of Auditors which now delights in showing the public such financial and reporting irregularities and exactly how the statistical fiddling has been achieved.
The Troika already has spotted that Portugal's state reforms have been more talk than action, as have the ratings agencies that need to be on-side next June when Portugal goes it alone in the international financial markets. If the government figures are indeed deceptions, the international markets will react accordingly and the governemnt will be back at the Troika's door with its begging bowl.
