“Portugal is always exceptional in exceptional moments,” said PM
Prime Minister António Costa has hailed the impact of the revised version of Portugal’s Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP, or PRR in Portuguese), which now amounts to €22.2 billion.
Speaking at the end of an event to present the revised plan at the Belém Cultural Centre on Tuesday, the PM guaranteed that the national economy “will accelerate its change with the PRR.
“We are talking about investments which will add €8 billion of business volume to the Portuguese economy starting in 2026,” Costa said.
Around 18,000 jobs are also expected to be created as a direct result of the plan, 11,000 of which the PM described as “highly-qualified.”
“This change will allow the country to change structurally,” he said, expressing his optimism that the country will be able to use all the money made available to it by the European Commission in time.
“The country is always exceptional in exceptional moments,” he said. “Twenty-five years ago, there was a lot of anguish about the Expo 98, but it was a huge success; there was a lot of anguish about what would happen with the Euro 2004, whether there would be a lot of violence, but there was no violence and it was all peaceful; even this year, everyone was worried about the World Youth Day and how we would survive this invasion of youngsters, but it was another great success.”
However, Costa admitted that “our greatest difficulty is being exceptional in our normal day-to-day life – and luckily the PRR imposes that exceptional quality upon us, because that is how we work best.”
