The government admits that 500 million euros was lost on the Lisbon metro works

“In this set of 1,700 million euros, we are talking about a final figure that will approach the 500, 600 million euros in additional costs,” said Jorge Delgado in an interview with Antena 1 and Jornal de Negócios.

The slippage, the official points out, is due to two factors that are “very well identified”: “costs related to the start of work, even before the start of work when you need to take mitigation measures, and costs for review of prices resulting from this exceptional inflation”.

When asked whether this value can still increase, the Secretary of State admits that yes, noting that the final value of any public work is generally higher than initially estimated.

“It can, of course, it can go up. As with all public works that are carried out that have a price revision, the final value is always a little higher,” he admits.

At the end of February, during a visit to the works on the tunnel that will connect the future Estrela and Santos stations of the Metropolitano de Lisboa, the Minister of the Environment and Climate Action, Duarte Cordeiro, Duarte Cordeiro, told journalists that the expansion of the network in 18 kilometers, between the extension of the yellow line, the extension of the red line and the new violet line, which will connect Loures and Odivelas, will require an investment of more than one billion euros.

In an interview with Antena 1 and Jornal de Negócios, the Secretary of State for Urban Mobility assures that the additional costs “will be covered”, namely by the Recovery and Resilience Plan and its reprogramming or, alternatively, by the state budget or by the Environmental Fund .

Jorge Delgado also adds that the state’s contribution to the purchase of electric cars may end, defending an evolution towards a “more universal” incentive in terms of charging costs, so that “they can be even lower”.

“We’ve maintained the stimulus for the last two years and electric car sales have skyrocketed. The purchase option is not fully tied to the stimulus,” he says, though he acknowledges that co-payment played a “key role in the early stages of the process” as it aided in decision-making.