Water reaching one fifth of the Portuguese population is controlled by Spanish or Chinese companies. The Government does not agree with these municipal agreements as it messes up its plan to privatise Portugal’s water supply industry.
More than 2.3 million people in Portugal get their water from Spanish or Chinese suppliers and 1.3 million people are supplied by water whose distribution is carried out by companies where most of the capital is foreign.
These supply contracts are one of the problems that are blocking the restructuring of the sector as the Government can not reach agreement with the municipalities to fix the supply networks while these deals are in place.
The mayors say that any return from stopping the 40% of water that is lost in the domestic pipe network is long-term which prevents anyone from paying for the work and claim that the solution was to sell concessions to foreign-owned suppliers to finance council 'investments.'
The councils in these agreements already have threatened to appeal to the Constitutional Court if the Government starts to interfere with the local supply contracts.
