Uma empresa não muda o seu plano de investimento a cada quatro meses

A company does not change its investment plan every four months

Eduardo Silva

Operations Director at Yunit Consulting

With over a decade and a half of experience in Innovation and Research & Development Consulting, he has been deepening his skills in supporting the definition and design of innovative products and processes in companies across various sectors. He stands out for his vast experience in preparing applications for EU funds, managing R&D projects, and financial and tax incentive systems.

Imagine you are running a Portuguese industrial SME. In May, the board approves the preparation of a three-million-euro investment. The factory is close to its capacity limit, there is demand, and an international client opens the possibility of a relevant contract, but requires greater production capacity, new processes, and additional certifications.

The company starts working. It requests proposals from suppliers, compares equipment, speaks to the banks, analyses hiring needs, reviews the factory layout, calculates the impact on cash flow, and evaluates the capacity to execute the investment without compromising other projects. And it naturally consults the Portugal 2030 Annual Call Plan.

The document indicates certain opportunities for the following months. The board does not assume the incentive is guaranteed — it would be imprudent to do so — but incorporates this information into the planning. Four months later, it consults the update of the same Plan, and some of the instruments it was counting on are no longer there.

Now imagine you are the director of that company. What do you do?

This is perhaps the most important question raised by the September update of the Portugal 2030 Annual Call Plan. It is not a discussion about having too much or too little money, nor a criticism of the existence of changes. An Annual Call Plan is a programming instrument, and its very nature presupposes updates. Dates can change, allocations can be adjusted, and priorities can evolve. All of this is understandable.

But there is another side to the equation: companies also plan. And their calendars do not change automatically when an Excel spreadsheet changes.

May and September tell different stories

In May 2026, the Annual Call Plan presented 211 calls, corresponding to a global allocation of around 3.16 billion euros. In the September update, we find 177 calls, with approximately 2.04 billion euros programmed for the period from September 2026 to December 2027.

We should not simply subtract one number from the other and conclude that 1.12 billion euros have disappeared. Between May and September, calls opened, periods ended, and the time window of the programming changed. But this caveat does not eliminate what the detailed comparison reveals: the composition of the instruments aimed at companies changed significantly. And it changed in just four months.

The example of STEP is particularly expressive. In the May programming, eight calls with a STEP reference were identified, with a joint foreseen allocation of around 400.95 million euros. Among them were 100 million for STEP – Productive Innovation – Energy, 75 million for STEP – Business R&D&I – Energy, 107.95 million for STEP – Productive Innovation – Digital and Biotechnology, and 76 million for STEP – Business R&D&I – Digital and Biotechnology. In the September programming, these calls are no longer listed.

This does not mean that 400.95 million euros have been taken away from companies. Some previously planned instruments have meanwhile had their own evolution or have been in the process of being launched. What the contrast demonstrates is something else: the picture a company had before it in May is substantially different from the one it finds in September.

Also in Qualification, we find a very concrete example. In May, a call was planned for SICE – SME Qualification – Individual Operations, with an allocation of 20 million euros and a planned launch for the end of October. In the September update, it was no longer in the Plan. The public record remains available and identifies the launch as an approximate forecast. For those managing funds, this distinction is understandable. For those managing a company, it is less comfortable: should they wait? Move forward? Downsize the project? Assume that the support will not exist?

It is precisely here that an administrative issue becomes an economic issue.

Companies do not invest in four-month cycles

An industrial company does not discover on a Monday that a tender has opened and decide by Friday to buy a production line worth four million euros. A serious investment starts much earlier: there are strategic decisions, engineering projects, licensing, financing negotiations, supplier selection, testing, hiring, training, and approval by shareholders.

The same applies to internationalisation. Entering the United States, Germany, or the Middle East requires studying markets, identifying distributors, obtaining certifications, adapting products, preparing logistics, and building commercial teams. And an R&D project is even more evident: you do not invent research to fill out a form. There is a technological problem, a hypothesis, knowledge, people, scientific partners, tests, uncertainty, and time.

And the cost of unpredictability goes far beyond the value of the incentive. Imagine an SME that intends to invest two million euros. If it anticipates a 40% support rate, it should not build a project that is only viable with those 800,000 euros. But it may decide that, with support, it will carry out an investment of two million and, without it, only 1.3 million. It might add automation, choose more efficient technology, bring forward hiring, or execute the project all at once, instead of spreading it over three years.

This is what an incentive can change: not necessarily the decision between investing and not investing, but the decision between investing, and investing more and better.

Faced with greater uncertainty, the rational reaction is to reduce risk. The company delays, divides the investment, chooses a less ambitious solution, or maintains liquidity. And there is a particularly dangerous word in a competitive economy: wait. While a Portuguese SME waits, an international competitor automates, increases capacity, enters a market, or launches a new technology.

Competitiveness does not hit pause while we wait for the new Annual Call Plan.

Predictability is also a competitiveness policy

Normally, when we think of competitiveness policy, we think of money: support rates, millions of euros, funds, credit, or tax benefits. But there is a public asset that does not appear in any budget allocation: predictability.

And it is worth a lot.

A predictable environment reduces risk and, when risk decreases, the ability to decide and invest increases. This is true for taxes, regulation, energy, and licensing. It is also true for incentives.

A company can adapt to a lower support rate. It can adapt to demanding criteria. It might even decide to move forward without any support. What it can hardly adapt to is not knowing what the scenario will be.

That is why the Annual Call Plan has a greater function than it appears. It is not just an agenda with dates, tender names, regions, and allocations. It is also an instrument for private investment planning.

If we want better applications, we need companies that prepare projects before the calls open. If we want mature projects, we need to give them time to mature. If we want truly strategic investments, we need entrepreneurs and managers to be able to integrate them into their medium-term plans.

All of this depends on anticipation. And anticipation depends on trust in the programming.

A Plan that changes does not automatically lose credibility. It has to be able to change. But the greater the materiality of the changes, the greater the effort should be to make them understandable.

We do not need an immutable Plan. We need a legible Plan.

Perhaps here lies one of the simplest opportunities for improvement. When a planned call is no longer in the next update, why not indicate what happened? Was it launched? Postponed? Integrated into another instrument? Is it being reformulated? Was it replaced? Is it no longer planned?

A few words can eliminate months of uncertainty.

The same could happen with the maturity level of the calls. Not all forecasts have the same level of certainty, so it would make sense to distinguish them: instrument under study, in preparation, programmed, or confirmed. Sometimes, a maturity indicator would be more useful to a company than a seemingly precise date.

It would also be useful if each update clearly presented the changes compared to the previous version. How many calls were launched? How many were postponed? How many were reformulated? Which are no longer planned? A history of this nature would allow an immediate understanding of the Plan's evolution without forcing companies, associations, or consultants to compare successive spreadsheets.

And there are typologies that, due to their structural importance, should benefit from greater continuity: Productive Investment, R&D and Innovation, Internationalisation, Qualification, and strategic technologies. Rules, allocations, and calendars may change, but companies should be able to see the horizon. A company that in September is preparing its 2027 budget needs to know, with reasonable confidence, which structural instruments might exist that year.

It is not, therefore, a matter of asking for immobility from the system. It is a matter of asking for legibility, continuity, and a horizon.

Responsibility also lies with the companies

It would, however, be irresponsible to place all the responsibility on public instruments. There is an equally important lesson for SMEs: no company should build its strategy based on an incentive.

A company must know where it wants to go regardless of the funds. What markets it wants to conquer, what capacity it needs, what technology it must incorporate, what products it wants to develop, what people it needs to hire, and what productivity it intends to achieve. Then it should look at Portugal 2030, tax benefits, and other instruments and ask which ones can accelerate what it has already decided makes sense to do.

The order matters: first strategy, then investment, then financing, and finally, the incentive. Never the other way around.

Because a call can change. But a company's strategy cannot change every four months.

The most prepared companies will also be those that can work with scenarios: investment with and without incentive, minimum project and optimal project, accelerated and conservative calendar, bank financing, equity, and tax benefits. A prepared company can react when an opportunity arises. A company that only starts thinking about the project when a call opens is almost always too late.

The greater the external uncertainty, the greater the rigour must be within the company.

Portuguese SMEs will continue to move forward

Perhaps it is precisely because I know many of these companies up close that I remain optimistic.

Portuguese SMEs did not grow in a particularly simple environment. They learned to export from a small peripheral market, competed with larger-scale economies, went through crises, digitalised processes, professionalised management, and entered international chains. Many transitioned from subcontractors to technology suppliers, created their own products, and conquered markets without waiting for an incentive to tell them to do so.

That capacity does not disappear because a call is postponed. An entrepreneur does not abandon a good investment because a line is no longer in the Plan. They seek financing, review the project, negotiate, adapt, and move forward if the economic rationale continues to make sense.

But we must not turn this resilience into an excuse to accept less predictability. On the contrary. It is precisely because we have capable, ambitious SMEs willing to invest that we must provide them with public instruments that match that ambition.

And some of the improvements that would make a difference cost very little: a history of changes, an explanation when a call disappears, a maturity level, greater multi-year visibility, and clearer communication. We are talking about plans with billions of euros, but perhaps one of the cheapest ways to increase the impact of these resources is simply to allow companies to plan better.

We do not need immutable promises. The economy changes, execution changes, European priorities change, and good public management requires adaptability. But adaptability and predictability are not opposites.

A company also reviews its budget, postpones investments, and changes priorities. The difference is that it explains why.

Perhaps we can apply the same logic to the programming of incentives.

Funds should accelerate the future, not force companies to wait for it

Portugal has companies that are more internationalised than twenty years ago, more qualified managers, knowledge centres, universities, technology, and highly specialised industrial sectors. We have SMEs that already compete with the best, and we continue to have very significant European resources to accelerate this transformation.

It would, therefore, be a waste to reduce this discussion to "more funds" or "fewer funds". The issue is making better use of the available funds. And making better use starts before the application: it starts with a company's ability to plan.

A public competitiveness policy should not tell the entrepreneur what their strategy should be. It should create conditions for good corporate strategies to move forward faster.

That is why the Annual Call Plan matters. It is not just a calendar, an Excel file, or a list of tenders. It is economic information. And economic information influences decisions.

In May, companies received a set of signals. In September, some of those signals changed. There is nothing illegitimate about this. But there is a lesson we must not ignore:

A company does not change its investment plan every four months.

Nor should it.

Portuguese SMEs will continue to invest, innovate, export, and seek new markets. They do so because that is the condition for growing in an open economy. Portugal 2030 can be a powerful ally on this journey, but for this, it is not enough to provide financing.

It is necessary to provide a horizon.

Because a good company does not need an incentive to tell it where to go. It needs to know if it can count on it to get there faster.

Funds should accelerate corporate strategy, never define it. And, to accelerate, it is necessary that companies can see the road ahead.