Aviva health insurers will launch a new scheme to allow expat customers to keep their insurance cover when they are in another country.
Its new international medical policy, Aviva claims, will allow policyholders to cross national boundaries without paying full "globetrotter" premiums.
The USA and the Caribbean, however, are not included.
According to the latest Portuguese Housing Market Survey it is predicted that house sales in Portugal will continue to rise in the next three months.
The report showed that Lisbon was "the only region where there has been an increase in the level of house sales, Oporto remains stable and the Algarve shows a slight decrease."
Adolfo Mesquita Nunes, Secretary of State for Tourism, has decided that Portugal does not have nearly enough hotels, even though significant numbers have to close each winter due to a lack of tourists.
New rules speeding up and facilitating the planning permission and building stages for new hotels have been drawn up and already have been published in the Official Gazette.
The Agriculture Minister has promised to simplify the tax bureaucracy for small scale farmers but said that there would be no changes to the Social Security contribution or tax registration rules for the sector.
Small farmers have until the end of January to declare their activity at Finanças and from then on must issue receipts for every transaction, however inconsequential.
The annual taxation applicable in Portugal to imported second-hand vehicles has been sharply criticised by Brussels which accuses Portugal of not taking into account the actual depreciation of vehicles.
The European Commission "formally calls on Portugal to amend its legislation on imported used cars.”
A statement issued today from Brussels read that the calculation of the taxable value of used vehicles does not take into account their capital depreciation.
New areas in the Algarve and Alentejo containing copper, lead and nickel in have been identified.
The discovery was made possible by a European study which has enabled an update to be made of Portugal’s mineral resources log.
The information was provided by Teresa Ponce de Leon, head of the National Laboratory for Energy & Geology who said the main discoveries in the Alentejo and Algarve regions are along the Iberian Pyrite belt, i.e. the main mining region in southwestern Europe .
The government announced today that the 2013 public deficit will be between 4.6% and 4.7% of GDP excluding the one off state support payment to rescue Banif.
If the €700 million given to Banif was to be added to the annual total, the deficit will be at least 5.1% as the state’s generosity to the bank was the equivalent of 0.4% of the deficit.
Pedro Nunes, president of the Board of Directors of the Hospitals of the Algarve, and Joao Pedro Moura Reis of the Governing Council of the Regional Health Authority managed both to miss the key debate on the 'State of Health the Western Algarve' where they were destined to be in the spotlight.
Both claim to have let the organisers know beforehand that they would not be attending but no messages were received and the audience was left disappointed and angry.
