Growing is no longer enough. It is necessary to gain scale.

For many years, one of the great challenges of the Portuguese economy was to be able to internationalise its companies.

By Paulo Lopes, in Economy · 25 Oct 2026, 20:01 · 0 Comments

Credits: Unsplash; Author: Andreas Brucker;

We needed to export more, conquer new markets and reduce dependence on a relatively small domestic market. Today, although this challenge is still present, the reality is different. Portugal has competitive companies, internationally recognised products and the ability to participate in some of the most demanding value chains in the world.

The October edition of AICEP's Portugal Global magazine once again puts competitiveness and the business dimension at the centre of the discussion. And it does so at a time when it is important to understand that the next leap of the Portuguese economy does not depend only on exporting more, but also on the ability of our companies to grow, invest and gain international scale.

Portugal continues to be an economy marked by small and medium-sized companies. This business structure has advantages, namely flexibility, adaptability and proximity to customers. But it also has important limitations when it comes to investing in research, developing technology, financing international operations or competing with large economic groups.

A company can produce an excellent product and win customers in several countries, but this does not necessarily mean that it has the financial, organisational and commercial capacity to become an international reference. Many Portuguese companies remain too dependent on their founders, specific markets or financing structures that hinder growth.

This is where we need to change part of our economic ambition. For too long we valued the number of companies created and the growth of exports, but we paid less attention to the ability to transform good companies into larger organisations, with their own brands, technology, international presence and decision-making power.

The example of Portuguese technology companies that today compete internationally demonstrates that the size of our internal market does not have to limit business ambition. The real market of a Portuguese company can be Europe or the world. But this ambition requires capital, talent, professional management and the ability to take risks.

It also requires a more growth-friendly economic environment. Bureaucracy, regulatory instability, context costs and difficulty in accessing finance continue to represent obstacles that become particularly relevant when a company wants to increase its size.

Portugal needs to continue to support entrepreneurship, but it must give equal importance to the growth of companies that already exist. We need more companies capable of going from dozens to hundreds of workers, from millions to hundreds of millions of euros in turnover and an international commercial presence for a true global organisation.

The Portuguese economy has already demonstrated that it can produce, innovate and export. The challenge of the next decade will be to transform these capacities into entrepreneurial dimension, productivity and wealth.

Because Portugal's economic future does not depend only on having more companies. It also depends on being able to have larger, stronger companies capable of competing with the best in the world.