Regulations strangle Portuguese company competitiveness

 In Companies, Competitiveness, News, Regulators and Supervisors

Administrative and regulatory barriers in Portugal contribute significantly to the country’s lack of competitiveness regarding its national economy.

According to “Position Paper No. 1 of 2025” from the Study Office at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Porto (FEP), these barriers, together with other distortions, explain Portugal’s 9th worst position among the 38 OECD countries and the 5th worst in the European Union (EU) in the OECD Product Markets Regulation index on Product Market Regulations.

The study by Óscar Afonso, director of the faculty, and Nuno Torres, responsible for the Office of Economic, Business and Public Policy Studies (G3E2P) of FEP and the University of Porto, makes a detailed comparative analysis of regulatory obstacles and barriers to competition in product markets (goods and services) in Portugal vis-à-vis the OECD and the EU (among 26 member states with data), the two reference areas used for comparison.

It was discovered that out of all 46 countries evaluated, Portugal was the 15th worst.

Highlighting the two situations of “greatest concern” the study showed that “we are worse than the average of the countries in the two mentioned reference areas on the index: distortions of state intervention and the barriers to domestic and foreign entry of companies,” say the authors.