Automobile sector is worth 6% of the Portuguese GDP
The Automobile Cluster Association wants a fifth producer working in Portugal until 2020. A study by Deloitte shows the sector is worth 11 billion euros, around 6% of the country's wealth.
The activities of the automobile sector in Portugal were worth around 11 billion euros in 2017, the equivalent to around 5.9% of GDP, employing 72 thousand people, according to a study made by Deloitte for Mobinov – the Automobile Cluster Association, who wants a fifth producer in the country until 2020.
The sector had never been measured this way, considering not only manufacturers or suppliers in the front row, but also textile, molds and tools’ producers or the modifiers of vehicles (which is the case of ambulances), revealing a broad and heterogeneous sector with a multiplying effect on the Portuguese economy.
According to the Portuguese newspaper Diário de Notícias, the study says that builders who are responsible for 85% of exports represent only a “small part” of the business generated by the entire sector, worth two billion euros. This means there is room for another producer, the Cluster argues.
“The sector had never been measured this way, considering not only manufacturers or suppliers in the front row, but also textile, molds and tools’ producers or the modifiers of vehicles (which is the case of ambulances), revealing a broad and heterogeneous sector with a multiplying effect on the Portuguese economy”, the president of Mobinov, José Couto, explained.
This study emerges in a particularly sensitive moment for the sector, because of the labor disputes that have been going on for months now between Autoeuropa (Volkswagen) and workers.
