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Recovery and Resilience Plan: how does it apply to your company?

Posted: Thu Dec 26, 2024 3:27 am
by shukla7789
With the COVID-19 pandemic hitting Portugal in March 2020, the sustained economic growth that had been taking place was immediately interrupted, threatening a new crisis to spread across the country and Europe in the 2020s.

The Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) is a program that aims to combat the arrival of this crisis through recovery actions, as well as anticipate a new period of growth, in addition to creating greater resilience in the face of potential new crises.
If you own a company or have any responsibility towards companies, for example as a Chartered Accountant, you may be wondering what this Recovery and Resilience Plan is and what impact it could have on your business . In this article, we have summarized the main answers to your questions, so that you can also benefit from this initiative and ensure sustained growth for the future of your company.

What is the PRR?
The Recovery and Resilience Plan, colloquially known by its initials PRR, is a structural hungary whatsapp number database and recovery program for the Portuguese economy, with an implementation period until 2026 , whose aim is to respond to the widespread retraction in economic activity following the arrival of the pandemic, the impact of which is felt not only in Portugal and Europe but throughout the world.

The RRP applies nationwide and envisages implementing a set of reforms and investments so that Portugal can resume its sustained economic growth in line with the other members of the European Union. Of the total budget of €24 billion allocated for the period 2021-2027 for the Portugal 2030 programme, the Recovery and Resilience Plan is financed by more than €16.644 billion in total resources, subdivided into around €14 billion in non-refundable grants and €2.7 billion in loans.

Context of the PRR
The Recovery and Resilience Plan originates from two distinct initiatives that were combined due to the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.

The first is the Portugal 2030 Strategy , a program that predates the arrival of the pandemic and whose aim is to promote economic and social development in Portugal over the next decade, seeking to make it a period of recovery and convergence with the European Union panorama. This program was revised following the impact of the coronavirus on the national and European socioeconomic context.

The second initiative that prompted the Recovery and Resilience Plan comes from the European Council's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, namely NextGenerationEU , a Community response and recovery plan that aims not only to revive European growth that was halted by the health and social crisis, but also to anticipate a social and economic transformation across Europe, seeking to create opportunities and jobs that are future-oriented and more resilient, greener and more digital. This initiative corresponds to the largest stimulus package ever financed by the EU budget, totalling €1.8 trillion.

General structure of the PRR
The PRR is organized into three structuring dimensions, corresponding to the main challenges and weaknesses in the Portuguese panorama: Resilience, Climate Transition and Digital Transition.

Resilience
The Resilience dimension corresponds to 61% of the overall amount of RRP grants (around 8.5 billion euros, plus around 2.4 billion in loans) and its purpose, as the name suggests, is to strengthen the country's social, economic and territorial resilience, in order to better prepare Portugal for future shocks.

In other words, not only recovering from the effects of the crisis caused by the pandemic, but also preparing for the construction of a more cohesive, competitive and inclusive economy, by strengthening the response capacity of the Portuguese education system, encouraging the creation of permanent jobs, developing skills for innovation and industrial renewal and increasing the number of graduates in Higher Education in STEAM areas (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics).

Still in the context of resilience , its impact is divided into three priorities :

the reduction of social vulnerabilities;
ensure a territory that is both competitive and cohesive in adapting to the climate and digital transitions;
at a business level, strengthen the national productive potential to ensure conditions of sustainability and competitiveness in the Portuguese business sector.
These priorities are reflected in 9 components, 20 reforms and 43 investments, which affect several areas, from the reform of Health Care to the management of water resources in situations of scarcity and, most importantly at the business level, component 5, "Investment and Innovation", which involves the promotion of R&D (Innovation, Research and Development) in companies.

Climate Transition
The Climate Transition dimension, whose allocated investment corresponds to around 19% of the Recovery and Resilience Plan budget (around 2.9 billion euros for grants and 300 thousand euros for loans), aims to boost economic sectors around renewable energies and promote better use of resources already existing in the country, motivating an energy transition in production and the transport sector.

From this perspective, the three priorities of the Climate Transition dimension are:

reducing greenhouse gas emissions by between 45% and 55% by 2030, compared to 2005;
47% of renewable energy sources in gross final energy consumption;
a 35% reduction in primary energy as a result of greater energy efficiency.
The five components of the Climate Transition are Sustainable Mobility, Decarbonization of Industry, Sustainable Bioeconomy, Energy Efficiency in Buildings and Hydrogen and Renewables.

Digital Transition
The third but no less important dimension of the Recovery and Resilience Plan, the Digital Transition is, in part, a response to the challenges that Portugal faced in adapting to a more digitalized way of working during its digital transformation process, including training for digitalization and the creation of digital skills and, consequently, a more efficient use of resources and more sustainable behaviors.

The Digital Transition dimension of the RRP is composed of five components (Digital School, Companies 4.0, Quality and Sustainability of Public Finances, Economic Justice and Business Environment and Public Administration – Capacity Building, Digitalization and Interoperability), to which 18% of the overall amount is allocated , corresponding to around 2.5 billion euros in subsidies.