Portugal’s government is to impose limits on commissions charged by delivery companies and on the price of gas cylinders, to coincide with the start of the new coronavirus lockdown at midnight on Thursday, as part of a range of measures approved by the cabinet on Wednesday.
Under the new rules, commissions charged by delivery platforms to restaurants are to be limited to 20% of the bill and delivery charges may not be increased to compensage.
The government also decided to impose maximum prices on bottled gas, as it did during the first lockdown, which began in mid-March last year and ran to the beginning of May.
Portugal’s president on Wednesday decreed the renewal of the state of emergency currently in force until Thursday for a further fifteen days until 30 January, to allow further measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. Parliament had earlier given its approval to the measure, as is required.
This is the ninth time that a state of emergency has been decreed since the start of the pandemic.
According to Portugal’s Constitution, it is up to the president to decree a state of emergency – which allows the suspension of the exercise of some rights, freedoms and guarantees – but he must first hear the government on the subject and secure the approval of parliament.
Worldwide, the Covid-19 pandemic has claimed at least 1,963,557 lives out of more than 91.5 million cases of infection.
In Portugal there have been 8,236 deaths associated with the disease out of more than 507,108 confirmed cases of infection, according to the latet bulletin from the Directorate-General for Health.
The disease is transmitted by a new coronavirus detected at the end of December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China.
