In a survey conducted by the Portuguese Business Association (AEP) among its member companies, priorities for the new executive include promoting reindustrialization, reducing the tax burden on families and businesses, and flexibilizing labor laws.
Other emphasized measures involve adapting the capitalization, debt, and guarantee instruments of the Banco Português de Fomento to business realities, incentivizing internationalization, supporting the training and retraining of workers, reinforcing family support, expediting the process of immigrant workforce entry, and promoting their social integration.
“Business leaders reaffirm various priorities, as shown by the survey results. The Government, particularly through the new Ministry of Economy and Cohesion, should prioritize, with strong determination, the set of measures that entrepreneurs reiterate,” stated Luís Miguel Ribeiro, Chairman of AEP, in a press release.
Regarding the new Ministry of State Reform, business leaders argue it should promote quicker responses from public bodies to company queries and expedite the execution of EU funds, ensuring faster analysis, approval of incentive system applications, and the release of funds for approved applications.
Respondents also want the new ministry to ensure faster construction licensing processes in municipal councils and to enhance the digital integration of the Public Administration, so that the State does not request the same document more than once.
The creation of a digital single window for businesses, direct access to documents (such as permanent certificates and property records), simplification of the tax system (ending the reversal of the burden of proof and taxation by indicative methods), and reducing costs for companies, specifically by eliminating fees on certificates and documents, are other priorities business leaders want the new ministry to address.
According to the AEP’s president, “Entrepreneurs are very clear about the role and priorities that the new Ministry of State Reform should have, which should involve the complete debureaucratization of the relationship between the State and companies, simplifying the entire administrative, legal, judicial, fiscal framework and ensuring its predictability.”
In the social/labor area, respondents call for depoliticizing the Authority for Working Conditions (ACT), reducing the number of surveys directed at firms, establishing a citizen ombudsman entity (to ease complaints and public service grievances), and fighting corruption through the creation of a “governmental action monitoring commission with the power to remove offending executives.”
Also requested is the establishment of a binding maximum deadline for administrative decisions, the publication of an annual public administration performance report, and structural reforms in health, education, and justice sectors.
Other specific measures that business leaders want the new Government to implement include “attention to those not working by choice,” particularly long-term unemployed individuals and youth not in employment, encouraging industrial activity “by applying mechanical and electrotechnical engineering to foster value creation,” and promoting domestic purchases for Public Administrations and Armed Forces.
The AEP survey, conducted online from June 2 to 13, received responses from 652 companies, more than half (52%) from the manufacturing sector, consisting of 32% microenterprises, 32% small businesses, 29% medium-sized companies, and 7% large companies.
