The Fitch Ratings sign on the glass facade of the agency's headquarters

Business 6 September 2026

Fitch lifts Portugal to A+, the fourth upgrade in two years

Fitch moved Portugal from A to A+ with a stable outlook on Friday, putting it level with France and Belgium. The agency now sees public debt at 87% of GDP by the end of 2026 and a budget surplus of 0.1%.

Fitch has raised Portugal’s sovereign debt rating from A to A+, with a stable outlook. It is the fourth upgrade in two years, the second from this agency since April 2024, and it puts Portugal level with France and Belgium on the agency’s scale.

The reasoning comes in three parts: falling public debt, sturdier public accounts, and the growth outlook. Fitch expects the debt ratio to end this year at 87% of GDP, alongside a budget surplus of 0.1%. It sees the economy growing 2.1% in 2026, above the euro area average, driven mostly by investment.

What one extra letter actually does

Nothing to your mortgage payment this week. A rating is one agency’s read on how likely a state is to pay what it owes, and the practical effect lands on the lending side: better notation, lower yield demanded at auction. That yield then works its way into the budget, into the slice spent every year servicing interest rather than on schools or hospitals.

Finance Minister Joaquim Miranda Sarmento called it “a great victory for Portugal”, noting that it arrives in a context “still marked by geopolitical and economic uncertainty and instability”.

The figure that still has to close

Fitch’s 87% projection for December needs context. In June the debt ratio stood at 92.9% of GDP, after a single month in which the stock grew by more than five billion euros. Quarterly ratios swing with the treasury’s cash position, and the number that counts for European comparison is the one at year end. Even so, getting to 87% by December needs a good second half.

One more piece of the picture changed last week. The Recovery and Resilience Plan closed on 31 August, and with it ends the largest injection of European funds the Portuguese economy has ever had. The 2.1% growth Fitch pencils in for 2026 now has to come from somewhere else.

By Beatriz Mota

Image: Government of Portugal / portugal.gov.pt (image bank)

Business 18 September 2026

Berkshire Hathaway makes Howard Buffett chairman as his father steps back

Warren Buffett, 96, becomes chairman emeritus with immediate effect and stays on the board. His eldest son, a director since 1993, takes the chair, while Greg Abel continues to run the company.

Warren Buffett stepped down on Friday as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the failing textile mill he bought in 1965 and turned into a trillion-dollar conglomerate. He is 96. The change took effect immediately. The board elected his eldest son, Howard G. Buffett, a director since 1993, as chairman, and named the father chairman emeritus. Warren Buffett remains a member of the board. In a letter to shareholders he wrote that Father Time always wins.

Business 18 September 2026

A Portuguese name from 1824 has just left the Lisbon stock exchange

Portugal's securities regulator cleared VAA — Vista Alegre Atlantis to leave Euronext Lisbon on Thursday, with immediate effect. Visabeira Indústria must now buy the shares of holders who did not vote for the delisting, at €1.07 each, within three months.

Vista Alegre shares can no longer be bought or sold on the Lisbon exchange. The CMVM, Portugal's securities regulator, approved the delisting request from VAA — Vista Alegre Atlantis, SGPS on Thursday, and the decision took effect immediately under article 251-F of the securities code. Nobody should be startled by it. The route was opened at the annual meeting on 29 May, where shareholders backed the exit at the request of Visabeira and a block of holders…

Business 17 September 2026

Abanca will take the boat as collateral, and front the subsidies that arrive late

Abanca Mar launched in Portugal on Thursday, lending to fishing, aquaculture, shipbuilding, ports, logistics, maritime tourism and offshore energy. It takes vessels as security and fronts public subsidies that have not yet landed.

A bank announcing that it lends to businesses is not news. A bank building a team that looks only at people who make their living from the sea says something about where it thinks the money is. Abanca launched Abanca Mar in Portugal on Thursday, a segment aimed at companies and sole traders in what gets called the blue economy. The definition is deliberately wide. It takes in fishing, aquaculture, seafood processing and trade, shipbuilding and the yards…

Ursula von der Leyen at the European Parliament podium beside an EU flag, delivering the 2026 State of the Union address

Business 16 September 2026

Europe insures a quarter of its disaster losses. Von der Leyen wants an alliance to change that

In her State of the Union address, the Commission president announced a European alliance for climate risk insurance. Around 25% of catastrophe losses in the EU are covered by private insurance, and the rest lands on national budgets.

One line in Wednesday's State of the Union address will get less coverage than the headline items, and it is probably the one that touches household finances in Portugal most directly. Only about a quarter of losses from catastrophes in Europe are covered by private insurance. The rest ends up where it always ends up, on the national budget.

Tugadaily bar chart comparing, in euros per kWh, the 2026 deviation of 0.0176, the 0.0100 trigger and the 0.0050 increase actually applied

Business 16 September 2026

Portugal's regulated electricity tariff goes up on 1 October. For most homes that is under a euro a month

ERSE is raising the energy tariff by €0.005 per kWh, about 2.7% on the average monthly bill. A couple with no children pay 95 cents more; a couple with two children pay €2.70 more. It covers 779,000 customers, and the regulator is passing on less than a third of the gap it found.

Electricity gets more expensive on 1 October for anyone still on Portugal's regulated tariff. ERSE is lifting the energy component by €0.005 per kWh, which works out at roughly 2.7% on the average monthly bill — and it is the percentage, not the amount, that will travel. The amount deserves an airing, because it changes how the number reads. The regulator's own statement works it through for two household types. A couple with no children, on 3.45 kVA and…

Business 15 September 2026

62 consultation responses have pushed Portugal's 1,050 MVA storage auction back by a month

Applications were due to open on Monday. The environment and energy minister put the delay at three or four weeks, and used a visit to Abrantes to confirm that part of the grid capacity at the old Pego coal plant is going to a technology free zone.

Monday was meant to be the day applications opened for 1,050 megavolt-amperes of electricity grid connection capacity, reserved for projects that include storage. They did not open. Maria da Graça Carvalho, the minister for environment and energy, explained the hold-up during a visit to the Tagusvalley science and technology park in Abrantes, and put it at three or four weeks. The reason is mundane, and in its way encouraging. Sixty-two submissions came…

Business 14 September 2026

From today the Portuguese state hands back 9.8 cents on every litre of diesel

Friday's order sets the extraordinary ISP rebate at 97.58 euros per thousand litres of diesel and 65.92 for petrol, in force from Monday. It is not a tax cut — it is the extra VAT the state collects when prices rise, given back.

Fill up this week and you are paying less tax than you were last week, by a wider margin than the headlines suggest. The order signed on Friday by the environment and energy minister and the secretary of state for tax affairs fixes the extraordinary fuel-duty rebate at 97.58 euros per thousand litres of road diesel and 65.92 euros per thousand litres of unleaded petrol. In the unit that shows up on the pump display: 9.8 cents off diesel, 6.6 off petrol.

Bar chart of where Portugal's gold is held: England 48.7%, Portugal 45.1%, BIS 5.2% and France 1.0%

Business 14 September 2026

Nearly half of Portugal's gold sits in London, and none of it is in New York

The Dutch central bank has just moved close to ten billion dollars of gold out of the US, and Spain, Germany and Italy have started arguing about doing the same. Portugal moved its 3.7 tonnes in 2021 — and the reason it gave was not political.

The Dutch central bank has spent recent months moving gold. Around 60 tonnes physically travelled out of the United States and Canada, half to its own vaults and half to the Bank of England, and the rest was sold in North America and repurchased in London — the reserves change address without the bars being the same bars. Nearly 100 tonnes in total. The governor talked about "readiness" and preparing for "severe crises". Nobody in Amsterdam said the word…

Business 13 September 2026

Douro growers will be paid for the grapes they don't pick (and the fruit has to stay on the vine)

The resolution behind the 12-million-euro package caps the payment at 1,125 euros a hectare and ties it to the drop against each grower's five-year average. It also gives the Port wine institute until 31 December to design a fund that would make this kind of rescue unnecessary.

The Douro harvest is halfway through and some of the fruit has no buyer. The government's answer is an emergency package worth 12 million euros, agreed in the Council of Ministers on 4 September and published five days later. The part almost nobody has picked up is how it works, because it is unusual: the money follows the grapes that stay where they are. The resolution creating the scheme authorises the Douro and Port Wine Institute to spend up to 12…

Business 12 September 2026

Nigeria sent half the LNG that landed at Sines last year

Portugal's energy regulator counted 46 tanker unloadings at the Sines LNG terminal in 2025, the entry point for 95% of the country's gas. The United States accounted for 43% of cargoes and Russia for 7%.

Portugal has an energy bottleneck and it sits in Sines. Around 95% of the gas that entered the country in 2025 arrived through the liquefied natural gas terminal there, according to the annual report from the energy regulator ERSE. The other 5% came by pipeline, over the Spanish interconnections at Campo Maior and Valença do Minho. The terminal closed the year on 46 tanker unloadings, seven fewer than in 2024, and filled 7,546 road tankers, 214 more than…

Business 12 September 2026

Cape Verde to Ponta Delgada costs €218. Lisbon to Ponta Delgada, half the flight time, tops €500

The Ponta Delgada chamber of commerce has written to Portugal's competition authority. It says the cheapest fare classes are almost never on sale, even on searches made for August 2027.

The comparison São Miguel's business community has put on the table is awkward because it is internal. It does not set Azores Airlines against a rival. It sets Azores Airlines against itself. A flight from Praia, in Cape Verde, to Ponta Delgada takes close to four hours and, for comparable dates, costs around 218 euros. Lisbon to Ponta Delgada takes about two, and shows up as a return above 500. Same carrier, half the time in the air, more than double the…

Tugadaily bar chart of containers returned to Portugal's Volta scheme: 10 million at two months, 100 million at three months and 305 million at five months

Business 11 September 2026

Portugal's deposit-return scheme has taken back 305 million containers in five months

Volta launched on 10 April and has tripled in the last two months: 100 million at the three-month mark, 305 million at five. The system now averages about five million returns a day.

Portugal's deposit-return system for drinks containers went live on 10 April and, five months on, has taken back more than 305 million single-use bottles and cans. The curve says more than the total. Two months in, more than 10 million containers had come back. At three months, 100 million. At five, 305 million. The number tripled over the last two months, which is exactly how a scheme behaves when the habit takes a while to form and then forms all at…

Business 11 September 2026

Your Portuguese mortgage does not move the day the ECB does

The deposit facility rate goes to 2.5% on 16 September, the second increase this year. What reaches your monthly payment is Euribor, and Euribor only reaches you on your contract's reset date.

The ECB Governing Council raised its three key rates by 25 basis points on Thursday, taking the deposit facility rate to 2.5% with effect from 16 September. It is the second rise this year, and energy is the reason. Inflation is still running above target, and the bank's own staff projections put it at an average of 3% in 2026, 2.5% in 2027 and 2.1% only in 2028. Growth is projected at 0.9% this year, 1.4% next year and 1.5% in 2028. That is not a stall.…

A combine harvester working through a wheat field in a cloud of dust in late afternoon light

Business 10 September 2026

Portugal's 10-cent farm diesel rebate runs again until December (and it only pays in the weeks prices climb)

The Council of Ministers, meeting in Bragança, extended the coloured-diesel support for farming, forestry, fishing and aquaculture to 31 December at an estimated cost above 15 million euros. The March decree being amended sets out the catch: the money is due only in weeks when the price beats a benchmark fixed in the first week of March.

Portugal's Council of Ministers met in Bragança on Wednesday and agreed to keep paying 10 cents a litre on coloured and marked diesel until 31 December. The Government says the scheme covers farming, forestry, fishing and aquaculture, and that the extension will cost more than 15 million euros from the state budget. None of this is new. The support was created in March and expired on 30 June, which was the cut-off written into the original text. What…