The Government guarantees that support for the reconstruction of houses and recovery of companies affected by the fires of the last few days in the centre and north of the country will be on the ground within two to three weeks.

At stake are European funds, funds from the State Budget and credit lines from the Banco Português de Fomento, revealed the Deputy Minister and Minister of Territorial Cohesion in an interview with SIC Notícias.

The first priority of support is the people and their most pressing needs that are being met by local authorities, but then it is necessary to rebuild houses and companies, without forgetting farmers. "We don't talk much about farmers. They suffered huge losses and need support for survival, in addition to support for the purchase of equipment and for food animals”, said Manuel Castro Almeida.

A survey of the losses is now being carried out and only after this exercise will it be possible to define the amounts to be allocated to the support. But its nature has already been defined, he says: “European support, from the State Budget and credit lines from the Banco Português de Fomento, to support the reactivation of the economic activity of companies”.

The way in which the survey of losses should be carried out was agreed with the mayors, in coordination with the CCDR, he explained. “There is a guide for the councils to describe and quantify the losses”, he said, acknowledging that this exercise “will take a while”. “There are very demanding cases”, he stresses.

But as soon as the “survey is completed, in three to four days we will be able to define the support and start implementing it on the ground”. The minister believes that it will take “two to three weeks”.

Castro Almeida says that they will repeat what went well in the allocation of support during the 2017 fires and correct what went wrong.