Portugal’s per capita GDP is further from EU average in 2021

Portugal’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita expressed in Purchasing Power Parities declined compared to the European average in 2021, Statistics Portugal (INE) revealed on Thursday. It represented 75.1% of the European Union average, a value lower than that observed in 2020 (76.2%).

The impact of the pandemic on tourism was one factor affecting Portugal’s performance, with “except for Croatia, the countries whose tourism-related activities had a more expressive weight in 2019 were among those that showed the least recovery in GDPpc, measured in PPP, in 2021 compared to 2019 (the year before the pandemic).” Portugal was the second most penalised country.

Despite moving away from the European average, in nominal terms, Portugal’s GDP per capita increased by 7.1% in 2021, with both GDP and population returning to nominal levels equivalent to those of 2019, the pre-pandemic period.

Compared with other European countries, there is a “dispersion of the [volume indices of Gross Domestic Product per capita] GDPpc volume indicator measured in PPP in the 27 member states of the EU is very significant”. Luxembourg (268.5) has the highest volume index, over two and a half times above the EU27 average, and also almost five times higher than that of Bulgaria (57.5), the EU country with the lowest value.

Also, according to the statistics office, the actual Individual Consumption Expenditure per capita (AICpc), which is more appropriate to evaluate households’ well-being, “was 83.6% of the European Union average (83.9% in 2020)”. In this indicator, Portugal occupied the 14th position in the Eurozone and 19th in the EU.