European ‘bazooka’ will inject five billion directly into Portuguese companies

  • ECO News
  • 16 April 2021

The Portuguese government has decided to give more money to companies in the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP).

The government delivered early this morning in Parliament the Stability Programme with macroeconomic forecasts until 2025. In this document, the Ministry of Finance reveals the impact that the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) will have on wealth creation in Portugal.

Under this European aid programme, Portugal will receive 16,643 million euros, of which 13,944 million euros will be financed through non-refundable grants and 2,699 million euros through loans.

For companies, the Portuguese government had foreseen a direct injection of 4.6 billion euros to invest until 2026. In view of some complaints from businessmen, the government decided to increase this amount to five billion euros.

The business programme with the largest increase in funds is the “Capitalize Programme”, which had previously allocated €1.25 billion and will now have a total of €1.55 billion, i.e. an increase of 300 million.

These are the other ‘drawers’ with money that will go directly to the companies:

  • Innovation = 1,364 million
  • Human Resource Qualifications = 630 million
  • Decarbonization = 715 million
  • Bioeconomy = 145 million
  • Digital Transition = 650 million

In addition to direct support, the 2021/2025 Stability Program foresees that the RRP will also have an indirect impact on companies, mainly through public works that will be awarded to private companies and the externalities achieved through public investment:

  • Infrastructure = 690 million
  • Water Management = 390 million
  • Energy efficiency of buildings = 70 million
  • Hydrogen and renewables = 371 million
  • Quality of public finances = 406 million
  • Economic Justice and Business Environment = 267 million
  • Digitalization of Public Administration = 578 million