When construction companies closed during the financial crisis, their teams, expertise and capacity to build were lost with them. Rebuilding that capacity takes years.

Writing in Observador, Rodrigo Jardim Gonçalves, Managing Partner at JGSA - Jardim Gonçalves & Associados, examines how bank capital and deleveraging requirements, under the troika programme and Bank of Portugal supervision, contributed to shrinking credit and the loss of construction businesses.

Drawing on his experience as a lawyer in debt recovery proceedings, he argues that businesses capable of recovering were left without the time and financing they needed.

The consequences remain visible today. Restoring lost capacity requires investment, sustained action and time. Families urgently need results, but decades of inadequate housing supply cannot be reversed in a few months.

[Read the full article in Observador (in Portuguese)] (https://lnkd.in/eZdviSE5)