Reports

This country policy profile on education in Portugal is part of the Education Policy Outlook series. Building on the first policy profile for Portugal (2014), it offers a concise analysis of where the education system stands today in terms of strengths, challenges and ongoing policy efforts, and how this compares to other systems. The profile brings together over a decade’s worth of policy analysis by the Education Policy Outlook, as well as the latest OECD data, relevant thematic and country-specific work and other international and national evidence. It also offers analysis of the Portuguese education system’s initial responses to the COVID-19 crisis and provides insight into approaches to building greater responsiveness and resilience for the future.

The COVID-19 crisis has had a profound impact on SME access to finance. In particular, the sudden drop in revenues created acute liquidity shortages, threatening the survival of many viable businesses. The report documents an increase in demand for bank lending in the first half of 2020, and a steady supply of credit thanks to government interventions. On the other hand, other sources of finance declined, in particular early-stage equity. This paper, a special edition of Financing SMEs and Entrepreneurs, focuses on the impacts of COVID-19 on SME access to finance, along with government policy responses. It reveals that the pre-crisis financing environment was broadly favourable for SMEs and entrepreneurs, who benefited from low interest rates, loose credit standards and an increasingly diverse offer of financing instruments. It documents the unprecedented scope and scale of the policy responses undertaken by governments world-wide, and details their key characteristics, and outlines the principal issues and policy challenges for the next phases of the pandemic, such as the over-indebtedness of SMEs and the need to continue to foster a diverse range of financing instruments for SMEs.

It is increasingly understood that entrepreneurship plays a critical role in economic growth and well-being. But which policies can governments develop to release its benefits? This publication offers guidance and inspiration. It identifies the range of entrepreneurship policies being pursued internationally, the problems the policies seek to solve and how they are designed and implemented. The focus is on how to create a broad base of start-ups with the potential for sustainability and growth by building a pipeline of new entrepreneurs, supporting start-ups to overcome barriers in areas such as skills, finance and innovation and stimulating vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystems. The publication examines the rationale for entrepreneurship policy, presents a typology of policy approaches and highlights principles for policy success. The points are illustrated by 16 case studies of inspiring practice policies from 12 OECD countries. These cases span policies for regulations and taxation, entrepreneurship education and training, advice and coaching, access to finance, internationalisation, innovation, and holistic packages for ecosystem building. Helpful summary tables guide readers to the information that will respond to their questions. The publication will give readers an overview of key entrepreneurship policy interventions and tips on entrepreneurship policy success.

Portugal has notably increased its international openness over recent decades, with exports’ share of GDP rising by 20 percentage points since 1993. This analysis couples microdata with panel regression techniques to investigate the drivers of Portuguese export growth over the 1995-2016 period. The results highlight that there was no one single factor behind the export expansion. While an improvement in price competitiveness played a significant role, the majority of the increase in exports was explained by other factors. These include increases in the quality of export products and weak domestic demand that prompted firms to increase their focus on foreign markets. The empirical results also suggest that the restoration of the health of the Portuguese financial sector and its further development is beneficial for export growth.

The governance of skills systems has always raised a number of challenges for governments. Being at the intersection of education, labour market, industrial and other policy domains, managing skills policies is inherently complex. Addressing these challenges is more than ever crucial as globalisation, technological progress and demographic change are putting daunting pressures on skills systems to ensure that all members of society are equipped with the skills necessary to thrive in a rapidly changing world. Strengthening the Governance of Skills Systems: Lessons from Six OECD Countries provides advice on how to make the governance of skills systems effective. Building on the OECD Skills Strategy 2019, which identified four main challenges of skills systems governance, the report presents examples of how six different countries (Estonia, Germany, Korea, Norway, Portugal and the United States) have responded to one or several of these challenges. It also outlines concrete policy recommendations together with a self-assessment tool which provides guidance to policy makers and stakeholders for designing better skills systems that deliver better skills outcomes.

This paper presents and discusses the general findings and key policy messages of the 2019 OECD Open, Useful and Re-usable data (OURdata) Index, and provides a detailed analysis of the results for each pillar and sub-pillar. Additionally, it assesses the main advancements and challenges related to the design and implementation of open government data (OGD) policies in OECD member and partner countries by comparing the results for 2019 with those of the 2017 edition. This policy paper contributes to the OECD work on the digital transformation of the public sector, including digital government and data-driven public sector and open government data.

Portugal has embarked on an ambitious agenda to guide the transformation of the justice sector. The report takes stock of the Portugal's justice sector modernisaton reforms and more current efforts to make the justice sector more transparent, accessible and effective. It examines specific programmes aimed at promoting innovation, humanisation and proximity to citizens through the use of digital technologies, simplification and demateralisation of procedures. Finally, the report identifies results and provide policy recommendations to support Portugal on its journey to provide justice services to meet the needs of citizens and businesses.

This report has been prepared by the OECD upon request by the Portuguese Independent Commission for Decentralisation. Decentralisation and regionalisation reforms have recently emerged on the Portugal’s policy agenda, with two main objectives: assigning more tasks to municipalities and strengthening regional level governance. The report presents a diagnosis of Portugal multi-level governance in international perspectives and highlights the strengths and challenges of the system. It then presents three potential policy paths of regional reform for Portugal. As the options are not mutually exclusive, they could work as complements to each other. The report analyses the conditions under which the reforms may deliver more economic efficiency and regional equity.