Everybody is taken aback by this decision, residents, visitors and shop-owners alike.  Shop-owners especially are quite vocal about it because they claim that the idea is not only not lucrative but it is actually causing losses, alleging that restaurants are seeing less traffic adding that paid parking is also putting potential shoppers off.

This idea was challenged last year when a group of shop-owners from the up-market Quinta Shopping and the adjacent Bougainvillea Plaza shopping malls joined together and when to the mayor of Loule.

The meeting resulted in the idea of taxing parking spots being withdrawn much earlier than planned and the group thought that the concept was completely scrapped, apparently they thought wrong.

On the other side of the coin, the administrator of the municipal company which manages public parking has said that the idea of taxing the mall parking was meant to guarantee the availability of parking places for the more demanding clients on a permanent case.

He continued to explain that 75 percent of all parking is still free of charge for any client or employee at all times, even when considering the fact that there is demand for parking in the area which far exceeds the availability of existing spaces, so the system was implemented in order to guarantee some free parking spots – 85 spots – for those demanding clients who are also willing to pay in order to ensure they can park their cars as close to the entrance as possible.