Neither the Press Advertisement Agency alone nor newspapers set the fee for official announcements. The governing provision is Article 39 of Law No. 195 on the Establishment of the Press Advertisement Agency: the price tariff for official announcements is determined by the President on the proposal of the Agency’s General Assembly and published in the Official Gazette.
A two-stage process
| Stage | Who does it | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Proposal | The Agency’s General Assembly | A tariff proposal is prepared |
| Determination | The President | The tariff is decided |
| Publication | The Official Gazette | The decision is published and enters into force |
The reference to the President in the article was originally to the Council of Ministers; it was changed by Article 162 of Decree-Law No. 703 of 2 July 2018. Tariffs before 2018 are therefore Council of Ministers decisions and those after are Presidential decisions.
What is the unit of measurement?
The tariff uses a different unit depending on the type of publication:
| Type of publication | Unit |
|---|---|
| Newspapers | Column centimetre |
| Online news sites | Box |
For newspapers the fee for an announcement is calculated by multiplying the column centimetre value — the number of columns it occupies multiplied by its height in centimetres — by the unit fee. The commonest error is skipping the centimetre-to-metre conversion.
The category distinction
The tariff does not give a single unit price; it divides publications into categories. In the wording of the 2026 tariff, Category A covers newspapers with average daily actual sales below 50,000 copies together with online news sites in the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th Categories under the Regulation on Official Announcements and Advertisements. Newspapers with higher circulation and General Category sites fall into a separate category with different unit fees.
When is the tariff renewed?
In practice the official announcement price tariff is generally renewed in the closing months of the year and enters into force at the beginning of the new year. The date of entry into force is stated separately in each decision; in some years it has slipped into February.
Price and quota are different things
Two frequently confused concepts must be separated. The price determines the unit fee of an announcement and is set by the tariff. The quota determines how many announcements fall to you that month and is found from your indicator number multiplied by the official announcement coefficient.
Your revenue is therefore the product of two variables: how many announcements you receive (quota) and what each is worth (tariff). The quota side is covered in the monthly quota guide and the coefficient in the coefficient guide.
How it appears on the invoice
Under Article 27 of the Regulation, newspapers and online news sites must issue invoices for the official announcements they publish over the amount remaining after deducting the Agency commission from the fee calculated according to the principles and measures set out in the Official Announcement Price Tariff. The commission rate is 15% under Article 116.
Conclusion
The price of official announcements is determined by the President on the proposal of the Agency’s General Assembly and published in the Official Gazette (Art. 39 of Law No. 195). The unit is the column centimetre for newspapers and the box for online news sites. The tariff is divided into categories and is generally renewed at the start of the year.
Price is only one half of revenue; the other half is the quota. The two must be planned together. The commission is covered in the commission guide.