The economy minister today appealed to companies to prepare investment plans now to respond to the future dynamism of a market driven by the "unprecedented volume" of financing that the country will have.
"It is important that companies now make their investment plans and prepare to respond to the needs of a market that will experience a growth movement in public investment unprecedented in recent years, which will also generate very significant private investment, and in that companies will need technological and digital systems and equipment”, said Pedro Siza Vieira at the end of the online conference “Economia Loures 2020: Innovation and investment in the post-pandemic”.
"It is good that companies prepare themselves, that they prepare their investment plans and that they are able to respond to this increased demand," he added.
Although admitting that, "over the next few years, there will be various anxieties for companies" due to the crisis generated by the Covid-19 pandemic - "demand will be hesitant, consumers will refrain from purchasing goods and much of the production will still be interrupted » – the minister pointed to the «unprecedented volume of financial resources» that the country will have «in the coming years» as an opportunity for «the most vigorous recovery possible» of the Portuguese economy.
«On the one hand, the next Multiannual Financial Framework of the European Union enters into force and, on top of that, we know that the reconstruction fund that Europe has prepared allows the country to have an additional volume of financial resources to spend in the next two or three years», he maintained.
For Siza Vieira, «these additional financial resources, well applied in reproductive investments and that can improve the economy's productivity and the companies' competitiveness, will place [Portugal] on a different level».
Thus, he said, "it is important that the investment movement be made in what the country needs most: to bet on the qualification of people, on the innovation of the productive system and on the capacity to invest to increase the added value of products and companies."
«These financial resources will be available to improve our physical infrastructures, our digital infrastructures, to re-qualify our companies in the digitization of processes and products, to invest in the education of the Portuguese and in the qualification of our research centres, our scientific and technological centers that support our industry», he stressed.
For the Minister of State, Economy and Digital Transition, "the worst" of the pandemic crisis "will have been during the month of April", and now it is time to "gradually open up the activity".
And, if the period of confinement revealed «trends that were already foreseen before», accelerating «in several years» the digital transition, Portuguese companies «revealed an absolutely extraordinary flexibility and capacity to adapt to new times».
«Many of our companies have re-adapted their entire production activity to respond to needs that immediately arose in a new context. We started to produce goods that we had never produced before, such as highly specialized personal protective equipment and invasive ventilators, in a great effort by our engineering and our medicine to respond quickly to new needs. And we were able to adapt the response of our health services to all these new developments», he recalled.
Convinced that national companies revealed during this period "the best qualities" of what he describes as "the Portuguese economic model" - "ability to respond very quickly, with great flexibility, high quality and at a very competitive price to requests of the market” – Pedro Siza Vieira argued that it is precisely “in these characteristics that the economy and companies need to continue to invest in the coming years”.
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