Lisbon: Portugal announced Friday it was renewing a temporary cut to fuel taxes to limit the impact of the soaring price of oil due to conflict in the Middle East.
The government said the cut would apply to petrol as well as diesel.
"Taking into account the evolution of fuel prices, the government will apply a new temporary reduction" in fuel taxes, said a finance ministry statement.
The new measure, taking effect Monday, would lead to "real savings of 1.8 cents per litre for diesel and 3.3 cents for petrol", it added.
Without the measure the price of a litre of diesel would have risen by 9.8 euro cents and 10.5 cents for petrol, said the ministry.
Portugal's government had already last week triggered a mechanism for lowering taxes on fuels when their prices climb by more than 10 centimes per litre from the previous week.
But that applied only to diesel, which saw its price soaring by 23.4 cents without the cut in tax.
Portugal used a similar mechanism in 2022 after oil prices soared following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
On Thursday, government spokesman Antonio Leitao Amaro acknowledged that Portugal was using the mechanism despite reluctance from Brussels, which considers such measures can harm efforts to switch away from fossil fuels.
But "the state shouldn't profit from the increase in fuel prices", he said, speaking after a cabinet meeting.
The price of crude oil has soared to over $100 per barrel since the outbreak of the war as the Strait of Hormuz -- through which a fifth of global supplies transit -- has effectively been closed to traffic.
