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FinObservatory

External balance sheets

Portugal

In 2024, Portugal had a net international investment position of -67.2% of GDP, owning 146.0% abroad and owing 213.2%. Across the four instrument legs it reports in 2024, 41.9% is equity-like (direct investment and portfolio equity) and the remainder is portfolio debt and other investment.

The balance sheet through time

YearNet positionAssetsLiabilitiesReservesCurrent accountCrisis
1970n/an/an/a7.6%n/a
1975-18.0%10.0%28.0%2.1%-4.0%
1980-22.9%15.5%38.4%2.4%-3.3%
1985-61.1%30.3%91.4%5.1%1.4%banking
1990-14.3%33.7%48.0%18.2%-0.2%
1995-16.2%57.4%73.5%13.4%-0.1%
2000-47.7%124.0%171.8%7.5%-10.8%
2005-70.4%161.1%231.5%1.8%-9.6%currency
2010-115.1%193.1%308.2%1.5%-10.3%banking
2015-123.9%167.9%291.9%3.2%0.5%banking
2020-121.0%185.0%306.0%2.7%-0.6%banking
2024-67.2%146.0%213.2%3.3%2.1%

Source: External Wealth of Nations (Lane & Milesi-Ferretti), 1970-2024 All figures as a share of GDP. Every fifth year shown, plus the first and last. Crisis column is the FinObservatory atlas, deduplicated across its five chronologies. Methodology

What it owes, and in what form

The composition of external liabilities. Direct investment and portfolio equity are equity-like: their value falls when the country does badly, so the foreign investor shares the loss. Portfolio debt and other investment (mostly cross-border bank lending) are fixed claims that do not.

YearDirect investmentPortfolio equityPortfolio debtOther investment
1993first28.7%5.5%11.2%54.7%
2024latest35.5%6.4%15.7%42.4%

Source: External Wealth of Nations (Lane & Milesi-Ferretti), 1970-2024 Each leg as a share of the four legs, which sum to 100 percent. EWN's total-liabilities aggregate also carries a financial-derivatives leg, left out here on both sides of the ratio, so these shares describe a smaller stock than reported total liabilities wherever that derivative leg is non-zero. First and latest year with a complete instrument split (32 years available). Methodology

Bilateral direct-investment positions

Where Portugal's direct-investment positions are located, and where inward positions come from. These are annual position stocks, not flows. The reported World observation supplies each total; the ranked counterpart rows describe its published geography and can be incomplete or confidential.

Outward direct investment

Positions abroad, grouped by the immediate destination economy.

Official reported World total

$72.91B2024

Top reported counterpart economies

EconomyPosition
Spain ESP$19.80B
Netherlands NLD$16.42B
Luxembourg LUX$4.26B
Brazil BRA$3.26B
Poland POL$2.65B
Italy ITA$2.54B
Angola AGO$2.50B
Mozambique MOZ$2.22B
France FRA$2.18B
United Kingdom GBR$2.18B

Coverage in 2024: 86 named economies among 98 partner rows. Codes outside the shared country directory are not ranked: GX225, GX226, GX451, GX454, GX509, GX510, GX641, GX837, TX983, U005, U150, U202. G001 is the World total and is not ranked or added to the partner rows.

Inward direct investment

Positions in this economy, grouped by the immediate investor economy.

Official reported World total

$207.78B2024

Top reported counterpart economies

EconomyPosition
Spain ESP$44.93B
Luxembourg LUX$38.34B
Netherlands NLD$34.45B
France FRA$16.12B
United Kingdom GBR$14.65B
Germany DEU$7.13B
Switzerland CHE$4.62B
United States USA$4.27B
Brazil BRA$4.23B
China CHN$3.63B

Coverage in 2024: 114 named economies among 126 partner rows. Codes outside the shared country directory are not ranked: GX225, GX226, GX451, GX454, GX509, GX510, GX641, GX837, TX983, U005, U150, U202. G001 is the World total and is not ranked or added to the partner rows.

Reported versus counterpart-derived

Official reported data (O) are the reporter economy's submission. Counterpart-derived data (SCC) are IMF staff calculations from counterpart submissions. They are alternative views of the same direction, not addends, so they are shown side by side and never summed.

DirectionOfficial reported (O)Counterpart-derived (SCC)
outward$72.91B (2024)$60.96B (2024)
inward$207.78B (2024)$127.95B (2024)

Source: IMF Direct Investment Positions by Counterpart Economy Values are full US dollars, scaled only for display. Top 10 named economies shown. Methodology

Reading this page

The atlas records 21 distinct crisis episodes for Portugal since 1970. The crisis column marks them beside the balance sheet, and it is deliberately left to the reader to look. This page does not narrate a causal story about deteriorating positions and subsequent crises, because for most countries no such story survives inspection, and the cross-country table on the index shows why.

EWN is a reconstruction. Where a country never reported a position, the authors estimate it, and the file carries no flag separating a reported cell from an estimated one, so this page cannot mark them either.

Methodology