Portugal entered for the first time the top 25 most attractive countries in the world foreign direct investment. According to AT Kearney, the country is on top of Norway, Austria and Brazil.

This study, that measures the confidence of the international investors, concludes that “Europe’s performance is good” because “the European markets represent half of the top 10 countries and more than a half of the top 25”. And highlights “France, Switzerland and Italy” as three “strong” cases.

“Portugal appears for the first time on the confidence index of foreign direct investment – on the 22nd place”. The foreign investors are choose the national economies for many reasons.

The study observes that the economy growth was 2,7% in 2017, “the highest rhythm since 2000”. Besides that, “the IMF projections tells us that the economy will grow 2,4% this year”.

The consultants say that “thanks, in part, to this economic recovery, the credit rating of Portugal was taken from a speculative level in September by Fitch and in December by Standard&Poor’s”. “It is expected that Moody’s follows this line in 2018”, adds the study.

The consultant also highlights the government work promoting “partnerships” between the public entities and the private companies to use the money on Portugal 2020 “on a wide range of areas focused on innovation” and is surprised with the explosive growth on the technologies sector, that “registered a remarkable growth of 673% in national and international investments in 2017 when compared to the previous year”.

“Lisbon is becoming a technological start-up center in part thanks to the displacement of the annual conference Web Summit, that used to happen in Dublin”. AT Kearney also gives examples such as the plan that Google has to open a new center in Lisbon “that will create 500 employments” and the partnerships with Cisco and OutSystems on the areas of the country digitization and artificial intelligence.

By Dinheiro Vivo, May 2018