The State Budget for 2019 will include funds for the electrification project of the Algarve Line and foresees an increase of almost two million euros in transfers to the Algarve authorities – but also more powers for the local authorities.
These are the few concrete data about the Algarve that can be removed, for now, from the State Budget for 2019, which was delivered yesterday by the Government.
In the proposed OE law for 2019, the Government indicates what the main priorities will be, at the national level, but leaves little or no space for investments at the regional level. Contrary to what happened until a few years ago, there is no longer the Central Administration Investment and Development Expenditure Plan (PIDDAC), which discriminated the investments planned in each SO in the different regions of the country.
Even so, the report associated with the proposed State Budget highlights two investments that will have implications for the Algarve.
From the outset, the Railway 2020 plan, for which “a global investment of more than 2 billion euros is foreseen, either for the construction of new railway lines, in an extension of 214 kilometers, or for the modernization of existing lines, in around 900 kilometers”, the report reads.
With regard to the Algarve region, the Government guarantees that, in addition to the investments that are already taking place in other regions, «projects will be underway for the modernization and electrification of the Western Line and the Algarve Line».
The Government had, moreover, announced that it intended to start these works on the Algarve Line in 2019, with an estimated cost of 57 million euros. The tender for this intervention should be launched soon, the Sul Informação.
Also with regard to the railway sector, the 2019 State Budget provides for the “acquisition, already authorized, of railway rolling stock”.
In July, on a visit to the Algarve, the minister of Planning and Infrastructure had already announced that the Government was preparing to rent diesel cars to face the lack of rolling stock and, in the future, to buy twin-mode locomotives, which can run on fossil fuels, but also on electricity from the catenaries.
With regard to transfers from the Central State to the Algarve's municipalities, it will grow, overall, by around 2 million euros, from the 83,7 million euros in 2018 to the 85,1 million euros in the budget for next year .
The 2019 State Budget report highlights the increase in transfers to local government in 2019, in the order of 163,7 million euros, at national level. Something that is linked to the transfer of competences from the Central State to the municipalities, which is still being regulated.
Outside the State Budget – as was, by the way, already expected – is the Hospital Central do Algarve. The report mentions the five new hospitals that the Government intends to launch next year, but the investments to be made in different regions are not specified, although an increase in funding for the health sector is announced.
In the coming weeks, with the lowering of the budget proposal to the parliamentary committees, to be discussed in the specialty, more light can be shed on what will actually be the investments that will be made by the Government, in the Algarve, in 2019.
Only then will it become clear if there is money, for example, for the requalification of the Algarve's ports, namely the Cruzeiros de Portimão, which money will be available to invest in the region's road network or to inject into the National Health Service.
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