Ensuring compliance with the Portuguese competition law and advocating in favour of competition in the Portuguese economy is the core mission of the Autoridade da Concorrência (AdC) - Portuguese Competition Authority. The work of the AdC includes fostering healthy competition among market players and raising awareness among economic agents and relevant authorities about the benefits of competition.

Portugal has been recovering steadily since 2014 after enduring one of the deepest recessions in the European Union. The economy is now on a positive growth path, with past structural reforms, more favourable global economic conditions, strong export performances and growing domestic demand all contributing to the upswing. After receding in the five years following the 2008 crisis, employment growth has turned positive and wage growth is picking up.

In 2016, the OECD was asked by the Portuguese Competition Authority to carry out a study to assess the impact on competition from existing regulations in the land and maritime transport sectors, and in the self-regulated (liberal) professions. This volume describes the outcome of the competition assessment on the transport sector (road, railway and maritime transport and many ancillary services, such as vehicle inspection centres, as well as Portugal’s ports and port services.

This report identifies distortions to competition in Portuguese legislation. It proposes recommendations for the removal of regulatory barriers to competition in the transport sector (road, rail, ports and maritime). In all, 485 potential regulatory restrictions were identified and analysed, and the report makes 417 specific recommendations to remove these barriers and increase competition and market access. The resulting benefits will allow more efficient firms to enter the market or existing firms to innovate with new forms of production, lower prices and greater choice for users. They will also increase transparency and provide more effective regulation of public services markets. This report identifies the sources of those benefits and, where possible, provides quantitative estimates. If the particular quantified restrictions are lifted and the expected effects realised, the OECD calculates a positive effect for the Portuguese economy of around EUR 249 million.

The transport sector plays an important role in the Portuguese economy, representing 4.3% of the gross domestic product and employing around 155 000 people. Among the several modes of transportation, road transport accounts for the vast majority of the movements of passengers and freight. Maritime transport also has an important role in the movement of freight, promoting international trade and guaranteeing the connection between the mainland and the Portuguese islands. Rail transport is primarily used by passengers for national routes, as it is constrained by the small size of the railway network in the country. This section provides an economic overview of the transport sector in Portugal and identifies the main Portuguese institutions responsible for issuing national regulations, including ministries, general directorates and public institutes. It also discusses certain barriers to competition that are transversal to all modes of transportation, in particular those related to public procurement rules and fees set by administrative bodies.

This chapter focuses on the road transport sector in Portugal, the most frequently used means of transportation. The chapter proposes regulatory changes and policy reforms to foster competition. Whilst most of the legislation is convened at the EU level, there are unjustified national barriers to competition. Among these are minimum capital requirements imposed on passenger and freight operators to start a business and licensing for freight operators operating solely with light trucks. Even though secondary legislation is pending to promote liberalisation, long-distance buses are still heavily regulated in terms of entry and price restrictions, and competition amongst taxis is hampered by quantitative and fare regulations. With respect to ancillary services, geographical barriers were identified in driving schools and vehicle inspection centres, in addition to price regulation in the latter. Lifting the identified barriers would increase consumer benefits up to EUR 201.42 million a year with gains for companies from reinvesting one-off savings of up to EUR 27.26 million.

In 2015, the Portuguese railway sector had a gross value added (GVA) representing 0.1% of the Portuguese GDP and employed 3 642 persons. The majority of legislation applicable to that sector is largely harmonised with EU legislation. Nevertheless, several barriers to competition were identified, including a lack of regulation concerning the certification of train drivers and a lack of conformity of the respective legislation with EU legislation and each other, a lack of conformity in the validity of railway licences with EU legislation, a lack or inadequacy of maximum times for entities to decide or act, a lack of formal repeal of superseded, not useful or obsolete legislation, and a lack of implementing regulation and guidelines concerning the intervention of the AMT and the IMT. These barriers prevent cost savings and increase legal and regulatory uncertainty for potential and existing railway companies and raise their administrative burden, while allowing some of them to be placed at a competitive disadvantage.

This chapter analyses the port and maritime transport sector in Portugal, proposing regulatory reforms and policy changes to enhance competition and competitiveness in the sector. While main Portuguese ports follow a landlord port management model, which is the predominant model in most OECD countries, national regulations often translate into burdensome concessions, licensing or authorisation regimes that pose unnecessary barriers to entry. There is often room to implement alternative regulations that can be less restrictive to the participation of the private sector in domains such as cargo handling, piloting, towing, port labour companies and shipping agents. With respect to maritime activities outside ports, although most of the legislation is international, there are some unjustified national barriers to competition, for instance, in the public services regime for cabotage in the Portuguese islands. The sector also suffers from administrative burdens and legal uncertainty resulting from obsolete legislation and an unclear legal institutional framework.

This study covers the Portuguese land and maritime transport sectors as well as ports. In particular, the study analyses road transport, railway transport, maritime transport (with the exception of inland waters) and activities in ports. The transport sub-sectors covered by the study are as follows, accompanied by the corresponding codes according to the Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community (NACE). In some cases, the corresponding code encompasses a broader set of activities than the ones the project team identified; in that case, we list the category used in the report. In some cases the statistical information was complemented taking into account the Portuguese statistical code, CAE, as it includes an additional level of classification.