IMF forecasts Portugal will be among the least indebted in Eurozone by 2031

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that Portugal’s public debt will continue to slow its rate of reduction in the coming years, but this will not worsen Portugal’s relative position in the Eurozone.

On the contrary, according to the IMF’s calculations, the country will be one of the few to continue reducing its debt, which will place it very close to the half of the least indebted member states in 2031.

At the end of 2025, the national public debt stood at 89.7% of GDP, a figure that compares with 93.5% observed in the same period of the previous year.

But despite the decrease, Portugal still has the sixth highest debt in the Eurozone, only behind Greece (146.1% of GDP), Italy (137.1%), France (115.6%), Belgium (107.9%) and Spain (100.7%), Eurostat announced last week.

On the positive side, Portugal remained among the minority of countries that managed to reduce its public debt, as the trend for most Eurozone states was towards an increase, with the debt-to-GDP ratio rising from 87% to 87.8% of GDP by the end of 2025 in the aggregate of the single currency economies.

Furthermore, Portugal also stands out for the pace of reduction. The 3.8 percentage point cut was one of the largest in the Eurozone, surpassed only by the reductions recorded in Greece (8.1 points), Cyprus (7.7 points) and Ireland (5.4 points).

The size of the reduction is very similar to that recorded in the previous year, when public debt fell from 96.9% of GDP to 93.5% (3.4 percentage points).

Source: IMF; Credits: IMF.