But the IMF's World Economic Outlook update tells a much more interesting story. The world economy is today conditioned by two seemingly contradictory forces: on the one hand, geopolitical instability, conflicts and pressure on energy; on the other, a huge cycle of investment in technology and artificial intelligence. For Portugal, it is perhaps this transformation that matters most, because although we remain particularly exposed to major international shocks, we have reached this period with some advantages that have acquired a different strategic importance: European integration, stability, Atlantic position, growing production of renewable energy, digital connectivity and a knowledge base capable of participating in progressively more sophisticated sectors.

It is in this context that some of the investments we have recently observed in Portugal should start to be analysed together. Data centres, cloud, space technology, advanced industry, aircraft maintenance, energy storage or artificial intelligence seem to belong to different worlds, but they are part of the same transformation. Companies and investors are rethinking where they produce, where they place critical infrastructure and where they can combine energy, talent, security and access to markets. Portugal can benefit from this reorganisation, but there is a huge difference between welcoming the new economy and being truly part of it. A data centre represents investment, but the Portuguese companies that provide it with technology and services represent knowledge and productivity. A multinational that sets up an industrial unit creates jobs, but a network of national suppliers that grows, innovates and starts exporting from that presence creates much more value for the Portuguese economy.

This is probably where we find one of the great challenges of the next decade. The IMF recognises the progress made by Portugal in recent years, from the greater soundness of public accounts to the resilience of employment and the economy, but continues to identify low productivity as one of the main limitations to the convergence of Portuguese living standards with other European partners. Attracting investment, therefore, can no longer be the ultimate goal. We need to get this investment to leave knowledge, skills, companies, technology and intellectual property in the country. It is this ability to multiply the impact of capital entering Portugal that will determine whether we are simply welcoming a new wave of international investment or whether we are effectively transforming the structure of our economy.

Global instability is naturally not good news, but the great periods of economic transformation have always redistributed opportunities. Production chains change, capital seeks new geographies and entire sectors are reorganised. Portugal today has conditions that it may not have had twenty years ago to benefit from this change, but success cannot be measured only by the number of investments announced, by the millions of euros involved or by a few additional tenths in GDP growth. It will have to be measured by the knowledge that remains, by the Portuguese companies that grow around these investments, by the more qualified jobs we manage to create and, above all, by the increase in the productivity of our economy.

Because the real opportunity is not only in getting investment to come to Portugal. It is in getting Portugal to grow with it.