Business competitiveness in Portugal

Abstract

The recent pandemic crisis deteriorated the position of the Portuguese economy, which was already far behind the European standards, since it was highly dependent on one of the most affected sectors: Tourism. The present study aims to conduct a pertinent assessment on the concept of Business Competitiveness and on how Portugal can progress in that field, for the sake of becoming a more sustainable and wealth-creator economy. That evaluation was performed with the help of 65 mediatic people from the Portuguese business ecosystem, who were asked to reflect on the state of the economy. The outputs of those interviews were then interpreted with the help of a Qualitative Data Statistical Analysis software, reaching the conclusion that there is much margin for improvement in almost all areas of activity, especially by promoting an innovative, value-adding and exporter private sector, and a “lighter” and more efficient public sector.