A quarter of Portugal’s Population is poor, despite a €79 increase in the average monthly household income last year.
The figures from the Income and Living Conditions from the National Statistics Institute showed 2,595 million people, including 487,000 under 18s and 468,000 over 65s, were barely scraping by and were classified as poor, or close to poverty and social exclusion.
The Minister of Finance, Mário Centeno, has awarded the maximum bonus possible to his tax office staff due to their achievement of high ‘coercive collection’ figures last year.
Centeno again is to transfer 5% of the money collected from debtors under the harsh ‘coercive collection’ system to a special Tax Stabilisation Fund which then pays out productivity bonuses to Finanças managers and staff.
The head of the regional tourism board, Desidério Silva, wants the Algarve’s beaches monitored by lifeguards from the start of Spring onwards, not just from the start of the summer season.
Yesterday, the official bathing season opened for Albufeira’s beaches but Silva pointed out that there is 100% coverage across the region’s bathing beaches only from June 1st.
As parliament today waits to question the Foreign Affairs and Environment ministers about Portugal’s climb-down on the threat from Spain’s Almaraz nuclear power station development, news has been released that a Portuguese Army team under NATO reported back in 2010 that 800,000 people in Portugal would be affected by a radioactive cloud if there was an accident on the scale of Chernobyl in the Ukraine.
The military simulation was carried out seven years ago, yet only now has been revealed on Radio Renascença, showing that the north of Portugal would be the region most affected if the Almaraz plant, 100kms from the Portuguese border, caught fire and blew up.
Animal breeding and feed producers Euroinveste is branching out into the agri-tourism hotel business with the announcement today that Hotel Riverade is to be built on an old farm leading to the banks of the Arade near Estômbar, Lagoa.
The 50 hectare livestock farm was abandoned years ago and is to be converted into a 31-room, five-star hotel at a cost of around €5 million.
The Socialist Party's Algarve District Political Commission has confirmed António Pina as the party’s choice as the candidate in the October 1st local elections, despite the city’s Socialists earlier deselecting Pina, citing a litany of undemocratic decisions and a too-close relationship with the opposition PSD that has enable him to rule the chamber.
Pina walked out of a Olhão council meeting to select candidates when he realised his name was not on the selection list and went straight to Algarve regional headquarters to start the process of having himself directly appointed, over the heads of the local Olhão Socialists.
The excellent economic growth figures for the Portuguese economy is all down to the reforms of the previous government, sais the previous government.
The former coalition partnership of the CDS and PSD has welcomed the positive economic data, "We are pleased with the recovery of the Gross Domestic Product this quarter which is due to the reforms made by the previous Government and a more favourable international and EU environment."
Long awaited dredging works are closer to happening as those concerned with this stretch of the Guadiana River, between Alcoutim and Pomarão in Mértola, have got together, resulting in the announcement of a start date of 'early 2018.’
Those at this key meeting looked at the current situation and managed to lay down a programme of 'things that need to be done' to sort out the navigability of the upper Guadiana which at the moment is generally navigable only to Alcoutim.
