DGO Tallies €337 Million in State Arrears Through 2025 Despite a €2.06 Billion Surplus — Health Drives €47 Million of the €42 Million Year-on-Year Step-Up, Average Pay Window Widens From 37 to 42 Days

The Direção-Geral do Orçamento (DGO) closed the 2025 fiscal year on Monday 18 May with a paradox at the heart of the Conta Geral do Estado: Portugal booked a €2.06 billion budget surplus and pulled public debt below 90% of GDP for the first time in two decades, yet the State itself fell further behind on paying its own suppliers. Pagamentos em atraso — defined as invoices outstanding beyond ninety days — climbed to €337 million by the end of 2025, a €42 million step-up from 2024, with the average payment window widening from 37 to 42 days across central administration.

The figure lands inside the same Conta Geral release that surfaced this morning's €1.16 billion PPP overshoot and Autoridade Tributária's €12 billion tax-debt write-off, but the late-payment line carries a sharper political edge: it shows where the squeeze is actually landing on the operational side of the State, separately from the headline aggregates that the Ministry of Finance tends to lead with.

Health Drains the Spending Tap Faster Than the Budget Refills It

The Ministry of Finance attributes €47 million of the year's deterioration to the health sector alone — a figure that exceeds the overall €42 million net rise, meaning other ministries combined ran slightly tighter than in 2024. Hospitais EPE arrears, supplier invoices for medical devices and consumables, and the running cost of the SNS's salary-valorisation cycle are the principal drivers. The structural issue: the budget envelope for 2025 was sized against pre-collective-bargaining headcount and pre-Hormuz energy assumptions, leaving hospital boards to keep paying nurses and electricity bills while pushing supplier invoices into the ninety-day-plus bucket.

APIFARMA's 2025 dashboard shows the average days-payable for pharma deliveries to the SNS at 138 days — well above the EU average of 60 — and the federation has been lobbying for the late-payment rule to be enforced with interest penalties rather than just monitored.

The 30-and-60-Day Reform That Was Meant to Fix This

Finance Minister Miranda Sarmento approved an inter-ministerial framework in February 2026 that shortened the statutory payment window for public bodies from ninety days to either thirty or sixty days, depending on the entity. The reform applies prospectively from 2026, but Monday's 2025 numbers show why the change was necessary rather than why it has worked: every additional month of delay translates into roughly €11 million of supplier-financing cost absorbed by SMEs that supply the SNS, autarquias and public-investment programmes.

What This Means for Expats and Foreign-Owned Suppliers

• Pharma and medical-device importers: if you supply hospitais EPE, you are entitled to charge statutory interest at the Banco de Portugal reference rate plus eight percentage points on any invoice past the new thirty-or-sixty-day deadline. Filing the cobrança at the SIGO-SNC platform triggers the audit trail.
• Construction and infrastructure contractors: the autarquias line of the Conta Geral shows the second-largest arrears contribution after health, mostly concentrated in PRR and PT2030 co-funded projects.
• Treasury and cash-flow planning: for SMEs invoicing the State, the 42-day average across central administration is the practical number to budget against — not the 30-day legal target — until at least the Q3 2026 DGO read.
• Investors in Portuguese sovereign debt: the rise does not threaten the 89.7% debt-to-GDP read, but it is the metric that the European Commission watches inside the post-PRR Semester reviews.

The DGO's full 2025 Conta Geral now goes to the Tribunal de Contas for the statutory parecer, with the audited version expected in the autumn alongside the OE2027 framework.