Data showed the asking price of new leases on houses and apartments jumped 10.6% year-on-year to a median of 6.91 euros ($7.49) per square metre, similar to an 11.3% spike in house prices reported last week - the biggest ever annual increase despite an economic slowdown and rising mortgage rates. Although the data suggest that the appetite for property is still red-hot in Portugal, the National Statistics Office said on Wednesday the number of new lease contracts dropped 3.3%. A protest is scheduled to take place in Lisbon and other cities on April 1 to demand affordable housing. In the greater Lisbon area, rents reached 10.38 euros/m2, followed by 8 euros/m2 in the sunny Algarve region popular with British holidaymakers, the statistics office said. Portugal is one of Western Europe's poorest countries, with government data showing more than 50% of workers earned less than 1,000 euros ($1,055) per month last year.
Although inflation slowed slightly to 8.2% in February, prices of unprocessed food products surged by 20.11%.
($1 = 0.9222 euros) (Reporting by Patricia Vicente Rua; Editing by Andrei Khalip and David Holmes)
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