Small Businesses Help Revive Portugal’s Countryside

Portugal’s rural areas have been losing population over the past decades, but European development funds are turning things around: entrepreneurs are receiving seed money to move and set up their businesses to help revive the struggling towns.

Only 35% of Portugal’s population lives in rural towns, and the rate is dropping by around 1% each year. So the Portuguese government and the European Union are providing financial support for renovating houses and starting up companies, to turn bring the numbers back up.

“There is quite a lot of European money available to boost the countryside,” says Amandine Desille, geography fellow at the University of Lisbon.

“There is a lot of room for entrepreneurship in inland Portugal,” adds Ana Abrunhosa, Portugal’s minister of territorial cohesion. “Our job at the government is to make sure these businesses have the conditions they need to be sustainable, profitable, and to be able to scale up one day, to generate more jobs.” She added that new businesses, universities and networks will bring more young people back to the countryside, generating “more demand for better services and infrastructure”.