The National Budget 2025-2029 was presented with an optimism that, as always, depends on variables that the State does not control: the real growth of the economy. This official document assumes a trajectory of expansion that makes it possible to finance growing public spending without touching too much the pocket of those who actually produce. But what happens if reality — as is often the case — is more stubborn than the Excel tables of the Ministry of Economy
?The answer is as clear as it is uncomfortable: greater state depredation on the private sector. Today, according to the most honest measures of effective fiscal pressure and resource appropriation (direct and indirect taxes, social security contributions, regulations that function as disguised taxes and public spending financed with future debt), the State already owns approximately 54% of the gross private product. Yes, you read that right: out of every 100 pesos generated by the Uruguayan private sector, the state apparatus appropriates 54. The rest is what's left to invest, pay real wages, innovate and, ultimately, grow
.Now let's imagine that real GDP growth is below what was projected in the Budget. Revenues fall. Spending — which is already committed to public salaries, indexed retirees, transfers and works — doesn't magically go down. What does the State do then? Exactly what it has always done when the accounts don't close: pressure is increasing on the only sector that generates net wealth
.
This translates into:
- Tax increases (either by raising rates, eliminating exemptions or creating
new “solidarity taxes”).- Higher debt issuance that will later be paid with more future taxes.
- More suffocating regulations that make private activity more expensive (licenses, controls, labor costs).
