Portugal invests €1.25Bn in housing to 2030
Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience Plan includes a €1.25Bn public home building deal to be invested over the next seven years.
The announcement was made by Pedro Nuno Santos, the minister for Infrastructures and Housing, while in Portugal’s northern city of Viseu.
“If we have public housing, we will have more instruments in order to meet the (current) housing problem (shortage),” he said.
Intimating that Portugal would build itself out of the economic crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Pedro Nuno Santos added, “It is important that the country mobilises, because there is a need to be able to execute (the programme) in its entirety.
“If we fail to do this, we are talking not just about housing, but the whole economic recovery,” he said, also mentioning that those “municipalities that were most efficient in undertaking the building programme” would benefit from financial help from Portugal 2026 incentives .
In total, and including the nearly €13Bn ‘bazooka’ of grants and loans agreed by the EU in the recovery programme, Portugal stands to net around €45Bn for the next seven years to be invested in greening up and digitalising the economy and to close the development gap with its more advanced and wealthier European partners, and iron out economic and social inequalities in Portugal’s inland regions and parts of the Algarve and Alentejo.
In terms of regional investment, the Algarve will get around €300 million financed by cohesion funds. Portugal will also have access to €10.8Bn worth of loans.
From this €45Bn total, Portugal will receive €15.26Bn for projects that must be carried out by 2026.
Should the government so wish, Portugal can also draw on a further €10.8Bn from this total amount of funds, in the form of loans form the RRF which was signed this morning (Monday 22 February) in the early hours after five days of negotiations.
The RRF summit which lasted two days and was launched on the premise that €750Bn would be made available to aid Europe’s recovery, resolved that €500Bn would be distributed to Member-States via grants and subsidies and €250Bn would be made available in the form of loans.