It’s a new fund created to capitalise small and medium sized businesses in the context of the ongoing pandemic.
‘Portugal Growth’ has 100 million euros at its disposal but will be able to mobilise up to 300 million in private and public investment.
It is what is being described as “an investment partnership between the Development Finance Institution (DFI) and the European Investment Fund (EIF)”.
Said a joint statement from both parties, the programme will use a combination of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) criteria “to select and monitor up to five funds run by private equity and capital growth teams from Portugal”.
These funds are expected to invest in around 40 small and medium sized ventures.
It’s a priority measure, said the two entities, “and urgent to support the training and capitalisation of Portuguese companies”.
Money will be directed to projects of internationalisation, digital transformation and business innovation.
The statement added that the DFI and EIF have received “multiple manifestations of interest from venture capital management companies”, so the first investment operation should be quick to sort.
Cited in the same statement, economy minister Pedro Siza Vieira said the programme was extremely important in the context of the ‘sanitary crisis’ caused by Covid-19.
Secretary of State for Internationalisation Eurico Brilhante Dias has referred to the weaknesses the crisis has thrown up in terms of “geographical dispersal of global supply chains”, saying he hopes programmes like Portugal Growth offer new opportunities for relocating these chains, particularly in strategic sectors.
This need to rethink ‘supply chains’ is fast becoming the government mantra.
It began last month with António Costa (click here) and has been consistently repeated by ministers at seemingly every available opportunity since (click here)
