General Daily Briefing — Wednesday, 17 June 2026
The latest Portugal news, analysis, and what it means for expats and residents.
Exchanging Your Foreign Driving Licence in Portugal in 2026 — A Practical Guide to the EU/EEA 60-Day Registration, the OECD/CPLP Two-Year Exchange Window, the Convention-Signatory 90-Day Grace and the €30 IMT Online Portal
A practical guide to the IMT process for exchanging a foreign driving licence in Portugal in 2026 — the EU/EEA 60-day registration, the OECD/CPLP two-year exchange window with no test, the convention 90-day grace and the €30 'A Minha Carta…
Opening a Portuguese Bank Account as a Non-Resident in 2026 — A Practical Guide to the NIF + Comprovativo de Morada Stack, the Activobank, Millennium BCP, CGD, Novobanco and Bison Bank Track, the SEPA IBAN Setup and the CRS Cross-Reporting
Practical 2026 guide to opening a Portuguese bank account as a non-resident: the NIF + comprovativo de morada stack, the Activobank / Millennium BCP / CGD / Novobanco / Bison Bank line-up, the Multibanco network and the CRS/DAC2 cross-repor…
📋 In This Edition
- Banco de Portugal Floats National Black-List of Bank Accounts Used in Payment Fraud
- Chinese Group Chint Files Environmental Scoping for the 1,300 MW Cluster Alqueva
- Jerónimo Martins Rolls Out Cultivar National-Supplier Programme at the Feira Nacional da Agricultura
- Portugal-DR Congo Bilateral Trade Booked a €7.3M Surplus as Mota-Engil Anchors a €1.1 Billion Pipeline
- GNR Padlocks Nine Unlicensed Elderly Residences in Lousada
- Autoridade Tributária Study Charts Portugal's Gini Spike From 42.36 to 45.87 as IRS Kakwani Hits Series Low
Banco de Portugal Floats National Black-List of Bank Accounts Used in Payment Fraud
The Banco de Portugal (Bank of Portugal — BdP) has opened a public consultation, running through 28 July, on a new Estratégia Nacional para os Pagamentos (National Payments Strategy) covering the period to 2030. The headline tool inside the security and anti-fraud vector is a centralised national black-list of bank accounts used in fraudulent operations, which would let regulated entities query the registry before executing flagged transfers and compress fraud-recovery windows from days to minutes. A parallel digital-fraud monitoring platform aggregating near-real-time signals from banks and payment institutions sits alongside the black-list. The strategy also revives a long-floated legislative obligation requiring businesses to accept at least one electronic payment instrument alongside cash, and introduces measures to discourage cheque usage. Governor Álvaro Santos Pereira has framed digital fraud as "a challenge with the potential to affect confidence in the financial system" that "demands a collective and structured response".
Chinese Group Chint Files Environmental Scoping for the 1,300 MW Cluster Alqueva
Chint, the Chinese-owned renewables developer, has filed the proposta de definição de âmbito (scoping proposal) for the environmental impact assessment of the Cluster Alqueva-Portel, a 1,300 MW bundle of three photovoltaic plants — São Gião (563 MW), Tapada Branca (580.5 MW) and Monte Santos (111 MW) — paired with 358 battery storage units delivering 895 MW and 1,790 MWh, plus two wind parks adding 50 MW from seven turbines. The package, spread across the Baixo Alentejo concelhos of Portel and Vidigueira, is part of the 2,520 MW Chint Solar holds in REN contracts across the region — more than 20% of the latest grid-connection round. Land surveys flag montados de azinho e sobro requiring ICNF authorisation, with mitigation and reforestation-compensation plans foreseen. The Agência Portuguesa do Ambiente will issue the scoping decision before Chint can submit the full Estudo de Impacte Ambiental.
Jerónimo Martins Rolls Out Cultivar National-Supplier Programme at the Feira Nacional da Agricultura
Jerónimo Martins, the Lisbon-listed group that owns Pingo Doce, has launched the Cultivar programme during the Feira Nacional da Agricultura (National Agriculture Fair) in Santarém. Built on three pillars — innovation in agriculture, business optimisation and community proximity — Cultivar packages technical training, sustainability audits and ESG diagnostics for the group's domestic supplier base. The retail chain already works with 115 Portuguese fruit-and-vegetable suppliers; roughly 95% of horticultural purchases come from national producers, with 315,000 tonnes bought in 2025, and 80% of total Pingo Doce purchases sourced inside Portugal. Coordinator Sara Domingos described the initiative as "a substantial increase in collaboration with partners". Quality lead Susana Fernandes confirmed the technical strand will run through specialist workshops and demonstration sessions, with calendar dates still to be fixed. Investment value has not been disclosed.
Portugal-DR Congo Bilateral Trade Booked a €7.3M Surplus as Mota-Engil Anchors a €1.1 Billion Pipeline
As the Portuguese national football team prepared to open its 2026 FIFA World Cup campaign against the Democratic Republic of the Congo at 18:00 WEST in Houston, the bilateral economic file looked thin on paper and weighty on projects. Portugal exported €12.9 million in goods to the DRC in 2024 and imported €5.6 million, leaving a €7.3 million goods surplus, according to the Instituto Nacional de Estatística (INE). Against €79 billion in total exports that year, the Congo file is a rounding error. The picture changes with infrastructure: Mota-Engil, led by Carlos Mota Santos, holds a roughly €1.1 billion pipeline anchored by a €230 million, 24-month build of a new container terminal at the Porto de Banana and a near-€860 million railway extension into the Lobito Corridor, backed by the US Development Finance Corporation and the European Union. Trade composition has shifted sharply year-to-year; the 2022 deficit of €617 million was driven entirely by fuel imports that did not repeat.
GNR Padlocks Nine Unlicensed Elderly Residences in Lousada
The Guarda Nacional Republicana (National Republican Guard — GNR) closed nine residences operating illegally as lares de idosos (elderly-care homes) in Lousada, in the Porto district, on Tuesday and detained seven people on the back of an investigation into maus-tratos a idosos (mistreatment of the elderly) open since 2016. None of the nine buildings held the licences required to host elderly residents under Portuguese social-care law, and conditions of salubrity, hygiene and caregiver staffing were judged inadequate. The 11 residents — nine women and two men aged 78 to 95 — were extracted and routed to placement locations identified by the Segurança Social. The seven detainees (six women and one man, aged 25 to 65) face their first judicial interrogation at the Tribunal de Instrução Criminal (TIC) of Penafiel at 14:00 Wednesday. According to Jornal de Notícias, charges include homicídio, criminal association, mistreatment, tax fraud and burla.
Autoridade Tributária Study Charts Portugal's Gini Spike From 42.36 to 45.87 as IRS Kakwani Hits Series Low
A peer-reviewed study published in the Autoridade Tributária's (AT) own journal Ciência e Técnica Fiscal — authored by researchers Alexandra de Andrade Dias Arsénio, José Maria Pires and Luís Silveira Santos and built on nearly 32 million IRS declarations between 2017 and 2022 — finds Portuguese income inequality worsened sharply in the closing years of the António Costa governments. The Gini coefficient fell from 43 in 2017 to 42.36 in 2020 before climbing to 42.65 in 2021 and spiking to 45.87 in 2022, the highest reading in the series. The bottom half of taxpayers (average €980 gross monthly) saw their share of total income drop from 21.52% in 2020 to 19.98% in 2022; the top 5% (above €3,500 gross monthly) climbed from 18.68% in 2021 to 22.63% in 2022. The Kakwani progressivity index slid from 0.3072 in 2017 to 0.2917 in 2021 — the lowest of the window — before recovering only partially to 0.2980 in 2022.
