The Portuguese government has passed a bill in the Council of Ministers to tax “excess profits” in the energy and food distribution sectors, in order to moderate the impact of inflation.
In its press release, the socialist executive did not specify at what rate these “temporary solidarity contributions” will be levied.
Following the agreement reached at the european level to return part of the “super profits” of energy producers to households and companies faced with soaring bills, Lisbon had indicated that it intended to tax “extraordinary profits” in the crude oil, natural gas, coal and refining sectors by at least 33%.
Since then, the Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa has raised the possibility of extending this contribution to large-scale food distribution companies.
“The bill we are going to present for the taxation of windfall profits concerns a set of companies that belong not only to the energy sector, but also to the distribution sector, and that have to pay for the profits obtained unjustifiably due to this inflation crisis”, he had said at the end of October, during a parliamentary debate dedicated to the 2023 budget.
The text approved on Thursday, and which will be submitted to the vote of the Parliament, where the Socialists have an absolute majority, “aims to mitigate the direct economic effects generated by the high prices applied by these sectors on the budgets of public institutions, consumers and companies.
Consumer prices in Portugal continued to rise in October by 10.1% year-on-year, the largest increase since May 1992, according to data released last week by the National Statistics Institute.
