#FomentoEditorial: When the market slows down, BPF makes things happen

In a context where economically significant projects face increasing constraints of risk, scale, and maturity, the role of a promotional bank is measured by its ability to ensure that the right investment happens at the right time and with sustainable financial structures.

There are investments that everyone recognizes as necessary: critical infrastructure, essential public equipment, strategic digital platforms, events with significant economic impact. And yet, even when there is consensus on their importance, financing does not always flow with the same ease. Not due to lack of merit, but because scale, risk, maturity, or complexity can cause the market to slow down.

It is precisely in these moments that the intervention of a promotional bank is justified.

Banco Português de Fomento (BPF), through its Debt and Investment Banking Division, has established itself as a decisive partner in bringing structuring projects for Portugal to fruition, guided by a simple yet demanding principle: not to replace the market, but to complement it, structure it, and mobilize it, ensuring that essential projects have robust, balanced, and sustainable financial solutions over time.

To date, BPF has participated in four structuring operations, with a direct financial commitment of €180 million, which helped mobilize around €3.6 billion in total investment. More than volumes, these numbers reflect leverage capacity, financial stability, and the continuity of investment in sectors critical for the country’s economic and social development. By enhancing project bankability—both in primary and secondary markets—and by assuming long-term risk in a stable manner, BPF contributes to more resilient financial structures, freeing up banking system capacity and ensuring that investment continues throughout the economic cycle.

In the first phase of the Porto–Lisbon High-Speed Line, a central infrastructure for territorial cohesion, competitiveness, and the transition to more sustainable mobility, BPF played a decisive role by enabling the project at a critical stage of its implementation, strengthening partner confidence, and ensuring the financial robustness of the operation. BPF’s involvement demonstrates how well-calibrated financial instruments can measurably improve the robustness, economic balance, and financial efficiency of large-scale projects.

At the Eastern Lisbon Hospital, a €455 million project, the challenge went beyond financial dimensions. It involved modernizing the hospital network by replacing six dispersed units with an integrated, efficient complex prepared to meet the future demands of the National Health Service. BPF’s participation reinforces the robustness and sustainability of the financial structure, supporting the investment throughout its lifecycle and contributing to the stability of one of the most important recent health projects in Portugal.

In the digital sector, support for the AtlasEdge Data Centres Campus, part of an investment plan exceeding €500 million, reflects a clear conviction: digital infrastructure today is as strategic as traditional physical networks, helping to consolidate Portugal as a strategic hub of connectivity and digital infrastructure at a European scale.

In the sports and tourism sector, BPF’s involvem

ent made it possible to carry out a large-scale international event, with an estimated economic impact of €100–200 million per year, enhancing Portugal’s external projection and energizing local value chains.

These four operations are distinct: they serve different sectors, use diverse instruments, and respond to specific risks. Yet they share a key feature: they demonstrate the importance of ensuring not only initial access to financing but also its sustainability over time, especially for large-scale projects with long maturity and structural impact.

This same principle is reflected in BPF’s current pipeline, with around 50 operations in structuring, involving more than €650 million of Bank financing and a total investment exceeding €4.7 billion across strategic sectors. Not as an abstract promise, but as a logical continuation of a way of intervening that prioritizes stability, impact, and rigor.