Officials revise debt figure again
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Your support makes all the difference.Portugal has for a second time revised upward the debt-stressed country's budget deficit last year, releasing official figures that said it was 9.1 per cent of gross domestic product instead of the previously announced 8.6 per cent.
The National Statistics Institute said in a statement dated Saturday it had sent the revision to Eurostat, the EU's statistics office.
The revised deficit figures are another setback to Portugal's economy as its government negotiates the terms of a badly needed bailout in an attempt to avoid bankruptcy. Portugal requested the bailout this month as it struggled with high debt after years of poor economic growth and amid forecasts of faltering output.
Delegations from the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF were in Lisbon last week to start negotiations on the terms of the rescue.
The bailout could amount to ¤80bn (£70.5bn) and the parties must fix the final amount and determine the interest rate.
In late March, the 2010 deficit was recalculated at 8.6 per cent after the institute was required by the EU to adopt Eurostat auditing rules which forced the integration of losses not properly accounted for previously.
The deficit figure is far above the 17-nation eurozone's limit of 3 per cent.
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