Families receiving minimum benefits or benefiting from the social tariff on energy will be given €240 after Portugal’s cabinet approved the support on Thursday, said Labour Minister Ana Mendes Godinho.
The support will cover about one million families (1,037,000 households). It will be paid in a single payment on 23 December for those who have the IBAN registered with Social Security and by postal order in other cases.
This support “will be paid to all households that have had exceptional support to compensate for inflation”, said the minister of labour, namely families that in April and June received an extraordinary benefit of €60.
The aim of this new support, to be paid in December, is to support “the increased expenses” of the “most vulnerable families” in the face of rising inflation and its impact on the cost of living, the minister said.
According to the accounts presented by the minister, a family with two children in which both members of the couple earn the minimum wage will have €760 of extraordinary support at the end of this year, taking into account the €60 paid in April and July and €350 in October (under the broader’ Families first’ measure) and the €240 that will be paid at the end of this month.
Refuting criticism of the fact that this new support is less comprehensive than that paid in October (which reached all non-pensioning adults with monthly incomes of up to around €2,700), Ana Mendes Godinho reiterated that the aim was to mitigate the impact of rising inflation among the most vulnerable families.
The minister added that the €240 was based on the impact of rising prices on a basic food basket for a typical family composed of three people.
“The value was calculated based on the €165 per basket, per person, applying on this base value the inflation that occurred in the second half of the year,” said Godinho, seeking, with these €240, to guarantee the differential and mitigate the impact of rising prices.
The minister also said that out of all the people on social benefits, 49% will receive the new support for being beneficiaries of family allowance, 27% for having a Solidarity Supplement for the Elderly or social pension, 16% for having Social Integration Income, 5% for being beneficiaries of the supplement of Social Allowance for Inclusion.
The measure approved on Thursday was announced by Prime Minister António Costa in an interview with Visão, adding that it will cost €249 million.
(Lucília Tiago | Lusa.pt)
Source: euractiv.com
