AICEP signs investment contracts worth €420 million

Portugal’s overseas investment bureau AICEP signed investment deals with private developers and companies worth €420 million last year – more specifically between private contractors and the State.

The contracts are for projects that will roll out over the next 10 years, many of which will be developed from this year.

The amount of investment shows as massive improvement on the €12 million attracted in 2022 and the €41 million netted in 2023, and reveals that the investment part of Portugal’s economy is recovering back towards 2019 levels before the Covid-19 and energy crisis provoked by geo-political wars hit the economy hard.

The projects will generate around 1,000 new jobs while some investments are over €100 million and other group investments are worth €20, €30, and €40 million.

The projects are spread throughout Portugal with many of them being of an industrial nature coupled with services and technology.

Among the various segments include semiconductors, the automotive industry and electric vehicles, pharmaceuticals and laboratories, information technology and pure industry.

In an interview with the business daily Negócios, the Minister of the Economy, Pedro Reis said that there were companies reformatting their production lines; others that were specialising in new lateral market niches, while others still were cutting capacity.

The minister also said there were tens of billions of euros of investment in the pipeline that AICEP was working on firming up.

But with the end of EU investments from Brussels earmarked for Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience Plan in 2026, would there be enough investment to sustain the Portuguese economy from other areas going forward?

Pedro Reis said he believed that the metamorphosis of Portugal’s economy to other strategic areas and sectors, its increasing overseas export focus, the greater consolidation of its sectors to increase scale, the use of more advanced technology, and better management of SMEs would all improve Portugal’s competitiveness so that after PT2030 and the RRP ended, Portugal’s economy would be more robust and dynamic having thrown off the existing shackles of outdated and no longer adequate economic strategies of the past.