Airport taxes will increase by 1.44% in March

  • ECO News
  • 7 January 2019

Beja's airport taxes remain unchanged, while in the Azores taxes will go up by 1.38% yearly, and up by 0.01% in Madeira.

The average increase in regulated airport taxes for Lisbon Airport will get to 1.44% in March — which means that there will be an increase of 0.16 cents per passenger, according to the airport manager’s deliberation. In the document which Lusa accessed last week, the airport manager ANA, notes that the variations will start being applied no later than the 5th of March.

The consultation process for updating the airport taxes started in September 2018; however, in the beginning of October, the regulator (ANAC) suspended the proposal after finding a set of contradictions between the calculations made and the concession plans that had been designed.

ANA restarted the process on 26 November, informing in a statement then that the airport taxes would suffer an average yearly increase of 0.01% in Madeira, 1.38% in the Azores and none in Beja. In absolute terms, the increase in revenue per passenger accounts to €0.001 in Madeira and €0.10 in the Azores.

“The evolution of the airport charges do not represent excessive increases, and they are well below the inflation rate (1.8%). It is equally important to note that these charges are not compromising in any way the activity of the airports of the Lisbon Group, neither are they underpinning its tariff competitiveness”.

ANA’s executive commission decided in November that there should be an average increase of 1.4% in Porto’s airport and 1.49% in Faro.

“In absolute terms, there will be an 11 cents increase in revenue in Porto, and of 12 cents in Faro, and the absolute increases proposed do not represent any excessive tariff variation, as they are below the inflation rate in the country and they are also not compromising the tariff competitiveness of any of the airports which are part of ANA’s network”.

The proposal for the 1.40% increase in Porto’s airport taxes was based on estimates that 12.5 million passengers use this airport, generating around €100.8 m in regulated revenue (€8.06 per passenger). The increase in revenue should reach around €1.3 m.

As for the increase of 1.49% in Faro’s airport, the proposal was presented considering that Algarve’s airport would welcome 8.8 million passengers, generating €72.7m in revenue from taxes, at an €8.21 value per passenger. The new values are expected to be applied from 11 January onwards.