According to the Bank of Portugal (BdP), up to June, foreign direct investment transactions totalled 4.1 billion euros, more than double the 2 billion in the first half of 2023, mainly due to investment made by non-resident investors in the capital of Portuguese entities (4.3 billion euros).
This figure includes 1.6 billion euros in real estate, which continues to be a driver of investment in the country.
During this period, investors resident in European countries invested the most in Portugal, totalling 3,218 million euros, followed by those from America (441.25 million euros), Asia (274.55 million euros) and Africa (220.25 million euros).
In the opposite direction, with regard to Portugal's direct investment abroad (IPE), transactions in the first half of the year totalled 2,600 million euros (3,400 million euros in the same period of 2023), of which 2,533 million were channelled to European countries.
As for the stock of FDI in Portugal, at the end of the first half of 2024, it was 184,000 million euros, while the stock of IPE was 67,600 million euros. These amounts represented, respectively, 67% and 25% of the Portuguese Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
The BdP details that “since 2008, both stocks have increased, albeit at different rates: FDI more than doubled between the end of 2008 and the first half of 2024, while IPE grew by 29%. When measured as a percentage of GDP, the weight of FDI increased by 22 percentage points, but the weight of IPE fell by five percentage points.
At the end of the first half of 2024, the economic activity sectors of “other activities” and “industries, electricity, gas and water” continued to be those that attracted the most direct investment — they represented, respectively, 39% and 14% of the FDI stock in Portugal.
When disaggregating the “other activities”, the groups that concentrated the highest FDI value were “education, health, other social and personal service activities and other activities”, including financial and insurance activities (40.9 billion euros), and “consulting and administrative activities” (22.5 billion euros).
As regards income from direct investment, in the first half of the year, FDI and IPE income were, respectively, 5.6 billion euros (higher than the same period in the previous year by 1.1 billion euros) and 2.7 billion euros (lower than the same period in the previous year by 200 million euros).