Where To Invest In Portugal? It is a question that the project with the same name seeks to answer. It is a territorial marketing platform that was born in 2006 and has since attracted the interest of 50 municipalities.
The concept is to have an online space with different information about the various counties in the country. From statistical information, updated every three months by the site promoters, for all municipalities in the country, the most concrete information, provided by each municipality, regarding the investment opportunities that each municipality offers and any incentives for such investments.
The recipients are foreign and national investors who have a first point of contact with the country and its various municipalities there. As explained to TeK José Mendes, president of Innovation Point, the company that developed the platform and that by 2011 aims to reach 70 percent of the continent’s municipalities.
The official explains that the project was born as a way of responding “to the change in the financing paradigm of the municipalities”, which in the manager’s view today passes more and more through the ability to capture investment that generates revenue.
Visits to the website are mainly made by potential Portuguese investors, but there are also an important number of accesses made from abroad. The partnership of Where to Invest in Portugal with the Portuguese-British Chamber of Commerce is one of the ways of publicizing the site outside the country, as well as partnerships with business associations and advertising.
José Mendes does not reveal any examples, but guarantees that several investment projects have already been completed, starting with the electronic platform, which for municipalities has an annual cost of 2,500 euros.
The evolution of Where to Invest in Portugal will in the near future include the expansion of the body of information available. One of the priority areas in this expansion is that of environmental information, which today is increasingly of interest to investors.
In the long term, the group also intends to put multimedia content from local authorities on the platform to help publicize the existing investment opportunities.
The internationalization of the concept that supports Where To Invest in Portugal is in the plans of Innovation Point, a company that identifies and evaluates ideas, which it later transforms into prototypes and places on the market. However, this movement should only happen after the platform has gained greater critical mass in the national market, although José Mendes guarantees that a proposal has already emerged.
Cristina A. Ferreira
