Foreign direct investment in Portugal rose to 13.2 billion in 2024

Foreign direct investment in Portugal (FDI) increased to 13.2 billion euros in 2024 , according to data released this Wednesday by the Bank of Portugal (BdP). The figure compares with 11.1 billion recorded in the previous year, with this increase in FDI transfers explained mainly by "investment made in the capital of Portuguese entities".

The BdP reports that 11.1 billion euros were invested in capital investment in national companies alone, which corresponds to 84% of the total transferred by foreign investors to Portugal. The increase in foreign direct investment transactions in 2024 also reflects a significant contribution from real estate investment , which reached a total value of 3.5 billion over the year as a whole.

The countries that invested the most in Portugal were Spain (3.8 billion), Luxembourg (3.1 billion) and the Netherlands (1.4 billion) , from an immediate counterpart perspective.

It should be noted, however, that the Netherlands, Luxembourg and even Spain are countries that often serve as intermediaries for FDI. In other words, for these countries, "the value of direct investment in Portugal, from the perspective of the final investor, is lower than that of direct investment from the perspective of the immediate counterpart". Countries such as China, the United States and France use these and other markets as vehicles for investing in Portugal.

This explains why, for the latter, "the value of direct investment in Portugal, from the perspective of the final investor, is higher than that of direct investment from the perspective of the immediate counterparty". At the end of 2024, Spain was the country of residence of the final holders with the largest direct investment positions in Portugal . They were followed by Portugal (due to the phenomenon of "round tripping", in which the final investor coincides with the country of investment), the United Kingdom, France and Luxembourg.

Portugal's direct investment transactions abroad (IPE) totalled 7.2 billion euros , a figure also higher than that recorded in the previous year (5.7 billion). Of note was the investment made in entities resident in countries on the European continent, in particular in the Netherlands (1.8 billion), Spain (1.1 billion) and Luxembourg (1.1 billion), in a logic of immediate counterpart.

At the end of 2024, the FDI stock was 200.3 billion, which corresponded to around 71% of Portuguese GDP. Conversely, the IPE stock was 76 billion, which represented 27% of national GDP.

"Since 2008, both stocks have increased, albeit at different rates: FDI more than doubled between the end of 2008 and the end of 2024, while IPE grew by 45%. When measured as a percentage of GDP, the weight of FDI increased by 25 percentage points, but the weight of IPE decreased by 2 percentage points", reveals the BdP.

In regional terms, Greater Lisbon was the region that concentrated the largest amount of FDI at the end of 2024: 106.2 billion euros, or 53.0% of the FDI stock . It was followed by the North, with 34.6 billion euros (17.3% of total FDI), and the Algarve, with 19.5 billion euros (9.7% of total FDI). Together, these three regions represented "80.1% of the total stock of FDI in Portugal".

(news updated at 11:34)