"If both documents no longer provide an answer to the underfunding and the record amount of debt to suppliers in healthcare, which already reaches 200 million euros, it is very clear that the Budget for 2024, as it is, does not solve the problems of the Azoreans from Santa Maria to Corvo", said the socialist Carlos Silva.

The deputy spoke today in the Regional Assembly, in Horta, at the start of the discussion of the Plan and Budget of the Azores for 2024.

Carlos Silva warned that the regional governments led by José Manuel Bolieiro (PSD) have caused an "inheritance of 800 million euros in debt" in three years, without any "new investments or improvements in the living conditions of the population".

"The region continues to break records in the increase of its public debt, with another 140 million in 2023 alone, a year in which, according to the government itself, there would be zero debt", he pointed out.

The deputy condemned the actions of the Regional Government during the privatisation process of Azores Airlines, considering that the executive "hid information and generated more instability, inside and outside the company".

"In just over a year, in the middle of its restructuring process and with SATA's financial situation worsening, we already have four resignations of directors and are on the way to the third new board of directors", he pointed out.

Carlos Silva also accused the Azorean executive of acting as if "it owned the region and the truth".

"Even in a situation of calamity, in which the Regional Government should be the main promoter of dialogue and consensus with everyone, we are witnessing precisely the opposite", he stressed.

And he added: "We reiterate here, at the beginning of the discussion of the Plan and Budget for 2024, our commitment to the Azoreans and the spirit of mission that mobilises us to be part of the solution".

The Azorean parliament today began the debate on the proposals for the 2024 Regional Plan and Budget, without the threat of the rejection of the document presented by the PSD/CDS-PP/PPM coalition executive, but with the PS's vote still "open".

The Budget proposal, which defines the strategic lines of the coalition executive for this year, includes a value of 2,045.5 million euros, similar to that presented in October 2023 (2,036.7 million).

This is the second time that the coalition Regional Government, led by the social democrat José Manuel Bolieiro, has presented a proposal for an Investment Plan for this year, after the previous one was rejected in the Legislative Assembly, in November, with the votes against of the PS, BE and IL and the abstention of Chega and PAN, which led the President of the Republic to call early elections.

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