Maria Manuel Leitão Marques was speaking to Lusa in a break from an event in Lisbon to present progress in implementing the Simplex+ 2016 programme, which follows on from a similarly named project initiated by the last Socialist government to 2011.

"Assessing the average rate of execution, of what is concluded and what is in the concluding phase, our rate is of 62% relative to the total of the Simplex measures," Marques said. She added that the rate would be "a little bit larger if "only those [measures] that were to be ready by February 2017" are counted.

Simplex+ 2016 comprises 255 measures, of which 213 are to be completed by June this year and a further 42 until March next year. So far 54 measures have been completed.

Marques described her team as "pleased" with the rate achieved so far. "It has been a very big effort [with] a lot of work to develop it", she said.

On the automatic calculation of personal income tax, which is being premiered this year, the minister said this was "one of the emblematic measures" in the programme, and one which “points the way to the future", in which the state is not constantly requiring people to provide the same information.

Marques also gave the example of the project to simplify the driver's licence, the so-called “licence on wheels”, which has three phases: "making the process virtual, eliminating the address on the document, and the electronic transmission of the data of the doctor's certificate”. Of these, two are concluded and the third is in the test phase, for an overall rate of execution of 80%, she said.