Covid-19 pandemic took almost €36 billion from Portugal

  • ECO News
  • 22 February 2022

Portugal lost €35.7 billion in economic activity in the last two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, equivalent to 17.5% of the country’s total GDP in 2019.

In 2020 and 2021, Portugal lost 35.7 billion euros in economic activity due to the Covid-19 pandemic, which is equivalent to 17.5% of the country’s total GDP in 2019, Jornal de Negócios reveals this Tuesday.

The figure, calculated using the Economic Research Institute (Ifo) method, corresponds to the difference between the European Commission and the Public Finance Council’s forecasts for both years – of a 1.7% growth of the Portuguese economy – and what actually happened: a setback of 8.4% in 2020, with an estimated growth of 4.9% in 2021.

Like the other European economies, the increase in Covid-19 contagions in the last quarter of 2021 slowed down the Portuguese economic recovery, also due to high energy prices and constraints in supply chains. Still, Portugal compared relatively well with peers, with GDP rising 1.6%, the second-fastest pace in the Eurozone.