With all kinds of forecasts and promises emerging from yesterday’s Council of Ministers, the bottom line is that yet again the government has kicked thoughts of a Brussels-led ‘Plan B’ into the long grass.

All kinds of ideas and reforms have now been ‘approved’ and it remains to see whether European moneymen will share the optimism echoed by president Marcelo, who has called the government’s Stability Programme “very sensible, very prudent and very realistic”.

The programme, along with the national reforms plan, were passed unanimously in an upbeat mood, with national and international media concentrating on different aspects.

The hunt is on for people suspected of having bribed two female building inspectors employed by Olhão council after €33,000 in cash was confiscated from the home of one of them.

The cash was found during a police swoop earlier this week.

Two Olhão building inspectors – both women - have been arrested on suspicion of accepting bribes.

The duo in the pay of Olhão council were detained as part of a PJ police operation entitled ‘Extranumerário’.

“Using their professional status, they would receive money from third-parties to carry out acts that went against their duties,” the force said in a statement.

The endless preoccupation with percentage points in Portugal has seen statistics authority Eurostat revise public debt revised upwards today, to 129% and confirm that the country’s ‘excessive deficit’ for 2015 - including the controversial Banif resolution -, was at 4.4%.

This throws a spanner in the works of Brussels’ rulings on countries within the excessive deficit procedure (PDE), but as Lusa explains, the government is still trying to persuade finance chiefs that Banif fallout should not be included.

PJ police are looking for a young man who allegedly tried to rape a 15-year-old girl in Lagos on Wednesday morning (April 20).

The attack happened while the girl was walking to school “on her usual route” from her home on the outskirts of town.

Following his impassioned speech on Tuesday declaring Portugal will “not accept to be condemned to live in poverty, a country of low salaries”, prime minister António Costa has let it be revealed that if push comes to shove, the PS government will increase IVA by two percentage points, from the current 23% to 25%.

This way, the “billion euro” haircut being demanded by Brussels will bypass the need to touch salaries or pensions, explains national tabloid Correio da Manhã.

April’s pay packet for public sector workers who earn more than €1500 is being paid from today (Thursday) and sees another increase in the progressive reversal of austerity measures brought in during 2011.

Algarve’s hoteliers association (AHETA) vows it will do “whatever it takes, even go to court”, to stop Vila Real de Santo António’s plans to bring in a tourist tax, charging holidaymakers €1 for every night they spend in the borough.

“It is unacceptable,” Elidérico Viegas, the head of AHETA, told Correio da Manhã newspaper.