Portugal signs for €1.3Bn ‘bazooka’ funds

Portugal has signed an agreement to receive €1.3Bn from the European ‘bazooka’ destined for its Recovery and Resilience Programme.

This comes after it has complied with the benchmarks and targets set by Brussels. The latest tranche should arrive this quarter.
It had already received an advance from the European Commission of some €2.3Bn in August, and Portugal is now in a condition to action the first payout of €1.3Bn in the next few days.
The announcement that the accord had been signed was made on Tuesday on social media by the body Recuperar Portugal which is led by Planning Minister Nelson de Sousa, and was set up to manage and supervise Portugal’s RRP.
Portugal has now taken the first step to advance with a request for this, the second, European ‘bazooka’ cheque.
The operational agreement was also signed by the European Commissioner for the Economy, Paolo Gentiloni and, in practice details the monitoring processes of targets and benchmarks agreed with Brussels which is a fundamental element for each EU Member-State to access the “bazooka” funding.
All told, Portugal must meet 33 benchmarks and five targets by the end of the year, including the creation and development of the development bank Banco Português de Fomento, the development of its capital markets and the development of the capitalisation of non-financial companies and spearheading continued digitalisation in schools.