With the release of preliminary data from Portugal's 2021 population census, the Minister for Territorial Cohesion – Ana Abrunhosa – acknowledged the worrying decrease in population size and said that Portugal will have to develop a very active and welcoming immigration policy to meet planned national investments.
Ms. Abrunhosa said: "as we are in a special period of investment, we are going to need a lot of manpower, a lot of workers, and I believe that this can only be achieved with a very active policy of attracting immigrants and treating them well".
According to Statistics Portugal, between 2011 and 2021 the country saw a population decrease of 2%, and patterns of littoralisation and population concentration in the Lisbon region continued. For Ms. Abrunhosa, "in order to recover the country's economy, and with the investment that we plan to make, a large part of that investment has to be made by people we don't have". The minister also stressed, however, the need to remain realistic, and observed that even with active policies aiming to increase the birth rate and attract immigrants, it will be difficult to recover the population size of 100 years ago in the country's interior territories.
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