Real estate continues to attract investors to Portugal. In the first quarter of 2024 alone, foreign direct investment in real estate amounted to 682 million euros, although this figure fell compared to the 853 million euros recorded in the final stretch of last year. Nevertheless, real estate still represents the largest share of the 1 billion euros in foreign direct investment in the country recorded between January and March of this year, reveals Banco do Portugal (BdP).
Foreign direct investment in Portugal in the first quarter totalled 1 billion euros, of which more than 600 million euros were in real estate investment. Although real estate continues to represent the largest share of foreign direct investment in the country, the total amount in the first three months of 2024 is lower than that recorded at the end of 2023 (853 million euros) and the amount observed in the summer of last year (1,137 million euros).
Thus, in the first quarter of 2024, the stock of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Portugal was 179.3 billion euros, which represented 67% of the Portuguese GDP, disclosed the Bank of Portugal in a statistical document published on Friday 24th May.
It was investors from European countries who invested the most in Portugal between January and March, totalling 544.03 million euros, followed by those from Asia (211.81 million euros), the Americas (159.53 million euros), and Africa (108.83 million euros).
It is worth noting that the stock of FDI decreased by 1.1 billion euros compared to the end of 2023, despite transactions being positive by 1 billion euros. “In addition to transactions, the variation of a stock is influenced by price changes, exchange rates, and other statistical adjustments,” with “the sum of these flows being negative in the first quarter of 2024 and surpassing the positive transactions.”
Meanwhile, Portugal's direct investment abroad (DIA) amounted to 65.4 billion euros in the first quarter, representing 24% of Portuguese GDP. Contrary to the decrease in foreign direct investment in Portugal, there was an increase in the stock of DIA by 1 billion euros compared to the same period, mainly justified by transactions of 1.8 billion euros.
