Government to allocate €3Bn of RRP in 2022

The Portuguese Government which has been allocated a total of €16.6Bn from the EU’s Resilience and Recovery Fund is to allocate €3Bn of the total next year.

“One of the key strategies for Portugal’s growth next year will be to ensure the RRP is allocated and a significant amount is expected which could be as much as €3Bn,” said the Minister of Finances, João Leão to the Lusa news agency.
The finance minister added “Portugal has already received the first tranche” of €2.2Bn, which has been earmarked for “environmental projects.”
“In this area we’ve put out invitations to tender and we’ve made payments in areas such as improving energy efficiency, to encourage families to invest in energy efficiency and renewable energy, and this is the part that is evolving the most,” added the minister.
In the meantime “competitions are being prepared with commitments in different areas and it is expected that these (projects) will have a very substantial impact on economic recovery next year.”
Portugal was the first Member State to formally hand Brussels its RRP to access the funds which are the central component of the ‘NextGenerationEU’ agreed within the EU to overcome and recover from the Covid-19 crisis. Portugal’s RRP approved by the European Commission on 13 June, shortly before the Portuguese Presidency of the EU Council ended at the end of that month.
Of the €16.6Bn total, €13.9Bn is from outright grants and €2.7Bn in loans to be paid back at favourable interest rates.
All told the EU has made a whopping €672.5Bn (at 2018 rates) available from the Resilience and Recovery Mechanism (RRM) which is a core part of ‘NextGenerationEU’, a fund which has €750Bn and which was approved by European leaders in July 2020.