Foreign investment hit a record in Portugal — and Montenegro says the country has never been friendlier to investors
Portugal closed 2025 with a record in foreign investment contracted through AICEP. The prime minister touts stability, but the Bank of Portugal sees more modest growth through 2027.
Portugal is pulling in more money from abroad than it ever has. In 2025, foreign investment contracted through AICEP — the agency that courts investment for the country — hit a record, and the prime minister was keen to underline it this week, at a ground-breaking ceremony in Figueira da Foz.
Luís Montenegro boiled the message down to one line: Portugal is now “friendlier to investment.” His argument is stability — political, economic and financial — as the ingredient that makes a foreign company choose to build a factory here rather than take it somewhere else. And in recent months, announcements of new industrial plants have kept coming, north to south.
Why is investment rising?
It’s a mix: a skilled workforce, costs still competitive against the European average, and a push from EU funds that co-finance part of these projects. The bet on sectors like energy, data centres and precision industry has drawn international names — and, with them, thousands of promised jobs.
How fast is the Portuguese economy growing this year?
Here the tone is more restrained. The Bank of Portugal, in its June bulletin, expects the economy to grow 1.8% in 2026 and slow to 1.6% in 2027 — solid figures, but hardly a rocket. In other words: record investment is good news underneath, but it isn’t enough on its own to speed the country up. It’s worth reading alongside the new factories still choosing Portugal. The official inflow data is on the AICEP portal.
By Beatriz Mota
Image: GualdimG / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
