Portugal 2020 paid 760 ME in advance between March and May

The Government paid, between March and May, 760 million Euros in advances to the beneficiaries of Portugal 2020, to which was added another 89 million Euros in repayments that companies did not have to make, was announced on 27 May.

"In the months of March, April and May we paid 760 million Euros to the various types of beneficiaries of Portugal 2020 support, this represents an increase of 170 million Euros", said the Planning Minister, who spoke to the deputies at a parliamentary hearing in Commission for Economy, Innovation, Public Works and Innovation.

During his initial intervention, Nelson de Souza explained that the objective was to support the “most fragile” organisations, which depend on structural funds, which include non-governmental organisations (NGOs), private social solidarity institutions (IPSS), as well as others to support victims of domestic violence or people with disabilities.

On the other hand, the executive intended to “privilege the continuity” of the support provided to companies, above all, to smaller ones.

In addition, as pointed out by the government official, there are a number of companies covered by a repayment plan to the State of subsidies, within the scope of Portugal 2020 (PT 2020) and the National Strategic Reference Framework (QREN).

“What we did was a unilateral moratorium. All instalments that were due between March and September were deferred for a period of 12 months, this corresponded to 89 million Euros that the companies did not amortize and an injection of liquidity of equal value”, said the leader of the Ministry of Planning.

However, Nelson de Souza stressed that these measures were carried out without new mechanisms for requests or appraisals, but automatically.

With a global allocation of around 26 billion Euros, the PT 2020 programme consists of a partnership agreement between Portugal and the European Commission, “in which the programming principles and priorities for Portugal's economic, social and territorial development policy are established between 2014 and 2020”.

The first contests of the PT 2020 programme were opened in 2015.