OECD is coming to Portugal to help boost the capital market
Portugal will receive European support from the Structural Reform Support Programme to pay OECD technicians who will attempt to revive the Portuguese capital market. The study should take 18 months.
Technicians from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are coming to Portugal to work with the Portuguese Securities Market Commission (CMVM) to help remove the hurdles in the Portuguese capital market, ECO ascertained near several sources.
In a time when more and more companies are leaving the Portuguese stock market and incentives towards the capital market as an alternative to banking seem to be insufficient, Portugal has applied to the Structural Reform Support Programme (SRSP) to help finance a study OECD will perform in the next 18 months. ECO ascertained the aid will stand between 400 and 600 thousand euros, with the purpose of helping boost and revive the Portuguese market.
The application was presented to Brussels by means of the Agency for Development and Cohesion (ADC), last October, highly sponsored by CMVM. It is still awaiting the final green light, and only them will it be possible to have a definite amount for the support granted by this programme, which helps European countries draw and implement structural reforms as efforts to support job creation and promote growth.
The relaunching of the capital market is one of the Executive’s priorities — which created several measures within the Capitalize Programme for SME –, but it is also one of the priorities of Gabriela Figueiredo Dias since taking office as CMVM’s president, little over a year ago. This priority intends to reinforce the attractiveness of the stock market, after the financial crisis of the past few years increased economic agents’ mistrust about the capital market.
There are numbers to this mistrust: more companies are exiting the Portuguese stock market than there are companies doing the opposite. Last year alone, three quoted companies left the Portuguese stock market: Montepio, Cimpor and Sumol+Compal. And there is another company leaving this year, which is SDC-Investimentos.
All in all, Portugal has never had as few quoted companies in the Lisbon Stock Market. The hope is to invert this trend this year with having more IPO (initial public offering), namely from Raize. This Portuguese fintech, which works like a small and medium enterprises’ loans market, has announced formal contacts with Euronext to begin a process of placing shares in the capital market in 2018. The offer is assessed in less than five million euros.
