Portugal’s Post Office service, CTT, is increase the cost of sending letters of up to 100 grammes as from April 4th.
According to CTT's new price information revealed today, a letter of up to 20 grammes sent by regular mail currently cost 47 cents but will go up to 50 cents as from next Tuesday.
The next price bracket is for letters between 20 and 50 grammes where the price goes from 60 cents to 65 cents, and heavier letters between 50 and 100 grammes increase five cents to 80 cents.
Above this weight, the prices remain unchanged with letters between 100 and 500 grammes staying at €1.40, and between 500 grammes and two kilos, at €3.25.
CTT said the average increase is 2.4% and tried to justify this to the Securities and Exchange Commission (CMVM) with some mumbo-jumbo equation involving the average annual change in “the price of a basket of correspondence services.”
The average inflation rate in Portugal in 2016 was 0.61% (http://www.inflation.eu) so CTT's 2.4% rise this year seems opportunistic, but the company has been privatised so a close correlation between prices and inflation seems to be a thing of the past.
CTT claimed that the price rises are "in line with the company's tariff policy for this year" and that "this update corresponds to an average annual price variation of 1.9%, also reflecting the effect of updating the prices of special services and bulk mail."
The price hike was defined in accordance with the Universal Postal Service price setting criteria agreed with ANACOM, the Autoridade Nacional de Comunicações, according to the CTT statement.
However the company tries to justify the increase, the net result will be to move more people to electronic services and away from posting letters.
