The Minister of Economy and Territorial Cohesion, Manuel Castro Almeida, admitted in an interview with ECO that Recovery and Resilience Plan (PRR) projects at 90% completion may not be fully finished by the end of the year without recourse to the State Budget. The minister announced that only in September will it be possible to determine the exact volume of works and the money needed to complete projects that were not ready. Portugal has 403,000 projects under the PRR, totaling 16,326 million euros in grants, in addition to a loan component which, according to the minister, should also be fully executed.
Castro Almeida acknowledged that it would be imprudent not to draw lessons from a project he classified as the largest ever undertaken by the Portuguese Public Administration. The first evaluation moment will be carried out by the mission structure Recover Portugal, which will present its report in October. The minister acknowledged that there was "excessive optimism or programming error" in the inclusion of works such as the expansion of the Lisbon metro and the Hospital de Todos os Santos, which did not have sufficient maturity to be executed within the PRR timeframe.
When projects could not be executed under the PRR, the Government had to make choices, redirecting funds to innovation and business competitiveness, particularly for artificial intelligence, which consumed approximately 800 million euros, and to the social areas of health and education. A decree-law allowed the passage of projects from the PRR to PT2030, enabling compensation between entities without requiring the actual return of money.
The minister defended that the PRR improved the lives of millions of Portuguese people through schools, health centers, and housing built, although he acknowledged that there was no structural change in the country. He guaranteed that the Government will do everything to avoid leaving works half-finished and that the responsibility for maintaining investments lies with each ministry.
