No surprises, Lisbon, Porto and Matosinhos are the large municipalities with the highest total amount of investments approved under the Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR). The conclusion is from an analysis carried out by the PRR monitoring committee on the distribution of funds from the so-called European “bazooka” in regional terms.
After the analysis carried out on small municipalities, the commission led by Pedro Dominguinhos now focused the analysis on the distribution of PRR funds among large municipalities, that is, with a number of inhabitants above 100 thousand. Among the 278 municipalities on the Continent, 24 fit these criteriawhich means that this analysis only covers 9% of national authorities.
Of these 24 municipalities, around a third have total investments “less than 100 million euros” approved to the final beneficiaries (responsible for the implementation and physical and financial execution of the investments), according to data collected until the end of September. “Another third has investments between 100 and 200 million and the last third has investments in excess of 200 million”, according to the PRR’s national monitoring committee.
O The municipality of Lisbon, with around 545 thousand inhabitants, has the highest value of approved investments, at 1,837 million euros. This value is greater than the sum of investments approved in the following three municipalities: 747 million in Porto, 480 million in Matosinhos and 354 million in Coimbra. Closing the top 5 is Oeiras, with 315 million in approved investments.
Together, these five municipalities collect “one third of the total investment from final beneficiaries”. “THE magnet effect of the capital and the country’s second city are responsible for a percentage of investment much higher than their weight in population terms. Lisbon represents around 15.8% of final beneficiaries’ investments and Porto 6.4%”, explains the entity led by Pedro Dominguinhos.
The monitoring committee notes that the “distinct nature” of the PRR in relation to other European funds, which limit the possibility of entities located in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area and large companies to apply for community funds, contributes, in a certain way, for this strong concentration of funds in regional termswhich is also linked to the polarization of economic activity.
“A particularly illuminating case of this situation is the weight of the Culture component in the municipality of Lisbon, where it is positioned in fourth place in the volume of investment, ahead, for example, of the Qualifications and Skills component, which includes the Impulsos programs and the Construction and Requalification of Schools. The concentration of a group of monuments, theaters and museums in the municipality, with intervention within the scope of the PRR, also helps to explain this concentration of investments”, he argues.
In the list of the 10 most supported municipalities, there are three municipalities from the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (Lisbon, Oeiras and Setúbal), another three from the Porto Metropolitan Area (Porto, Matosinhos and Maia), two from the intermunicipal community (CIM) of Ave (Vila Nova de Famalicão and Guimarães), one from the CIM in the Coimbra Region (Coimbra) and one from Cávado (Braga).
On the other hand, the large municipality that presented the lowest values is Odivelaswith 42.5 million euros in investments approved in the PRR.
Aveiro leads among medium-sized municipalities
Considering only medium-sized municipalities (i.e., with between 20 thousand and 100 thousand inhabitants), the analysis carried out by the PRR monitoring committee reveals that the CIM in the Aveiro Region is the one with the most municipalities supported by the “bazooka”. In the top five places among the most supported medium-sized municipalities, three municipalities belong to the Aveiro Region.
Of the 278 municipalities on the Continent, 90 fit the definition of “medium size”. Of these, 21 municipalities have approved investments worth a combined value of less than R$20 million, 33 municipalities have investments between R$20 million and R$40 million, 18 between R$40 million and R$60 million and another 18 total more than R$ $60 million, according to data recorded up to the end of the third quarter of this year.
O The lowest value of investments approved for final beneficiaries is around 4.2 million euros and concerns Almeirim. Conversely, the highest exceeds 240 million euros and belongs to the municipality of Aveiro. Next come Vila Real (152 million euros), Águeda (148 million), Estarreja (136 million) and Faro (121 million), Viana do Castelo (117 million) and Figueira da Foz (117 million).
In terms of regional representation, the top 15 is made up of four CIM municipalities in the Aveiro Region (Aveiro, Águeda, Estarreja and Ílhavo), two in the Porto Metropolitan Area (São João da Madeira and Vila do Conde), and for each of the CIMs of Douro (Vila Real), Algarve (Faro), Alto Minho (Viana do Castelo), Coimbra Region (Figueira da Foz), Lisbon Metropolitan Area (Mafra), Leiria Region ( Leiria), Central Alentejo (Évora), Tâmega e Sousa (Paços de Ferreira) and Terra de Trás-os-Montes (Bragança).
The commission led by Pedro Dominguinhos notes that, like small municipalities, “also in medium-sized municipalities corporate capitalization and corporate decarbonization represent a significant weight”. “Large companies, higher education institutions, the existence of ULS (local health units) in these municipalities, in addition to municipalities with projects in their portfolio, significantly enhance the PRR’s investment absorption capacity”, he notes.
Source: www.jornaldenegocios.pt
