According to the source, “from the weekend until 12 noon today [Tuesday] 80,000 new members signed up” to the programme.

The Ministry of João Leão also mentioned that, until 12 noon this Tuesday, €35.3 million had already been reimbursed to consumers through AUTOvouchers.

Compared to the €26 million reported last Friday by the Minister of Finance, this is an increase of €9.3 million.

Difficulties

In view of the difficulties that, in recent days, have been reported in the new subscriptions to the AUTOvoucher, Saltpay, the company that operates the program, admitted that there were “one-off constraints”, but assured that the situation has been “stabilised” since the end of the Monday afternoon.

“During the weekend and Monday, there has been a large influx to the IVAucher website, so there were occasional constraints, which did not prevent the system from working and making records”, said the company in a written note.

“The change in the benefit value in March led to an increase in the volume of accesses, with an extraordinary volume of transactions also being recorded, due to the increase in trips to gas stations”. However, they assured that, “the situation has stabilized since yesterday [Monday] to late afternoon”.

The Government announced on Friday an increase in the discount on the AUTOvoucher to €20 in March, in order to mitigate the impact of the increase in fuel prices.

Finance Minister João Leão stressed that the increase in the discount in March was an “extraordinary” measure.

The AUTOvoucher was one of the measures taken by the Government at the end of last year, along with others, with the aim of mitigating the impact of the rise in fuel prices, with the expectation that this upward trend would be temporary.