In an increasingly demanding international context, Portugal faces the imperative of strengthening its business base as an essential condition for economic and social progress. National Accounts data show GDP growth of 1.9% in 2025, following 2.2% in 2024. This is a sign of resilience, but clearly insufficient to ensure rapid and sustained convergence with more developed European economies. Growth was based exclusively on domestic demand, with the contribution of net external demand being negative for the second consecutive year—a reality that deserves deep reflection, as the Portuguese economy cannot structurally depend on domestic dynamics to sustain output expansion; it is a model that proves vulnerable and limits the potential for competitive assertion in the European and global space. Furthermore, investment is showing signs of slowing down. Excluding changes in inventories, Gross Fixed Capital Formation has been decelerating, with a decline even observed in investment in machinery and equipment. When companies invest less in technology, productive modernisation, and innovation, future productivity gains are compromised, and the ability to compete in increasingly sophisticated external markets is reduced. This is an especially worrying situation during a period of implementation of crucial European funds, such as PT 2030. Export intensity has also regressed, standing at 43.6% of GDP in 2025, a value lower than that recorded in previous years and far from the levels we aim to reach. The escalation of the conflict involving the United States of America, Israel, and Iran, with disruptions already visible in one of the main arteries of global energy trade (the Strait of Hormuz), accentuates high international uncertainty, with repercussions on rising production costs (energy prices and maritime freight). For an economy heavily dependent on energy imports, such as the European one, this risk cannot be underestimated. Persistent inflationary pressure could lead to a tightening of monetary policy, with rising interest rates, which would have consequences for business investment, making financing more expensive and conditioning strategic decisions, precisely at a time when we need more innovation and international expansion to grow solidly. It is up to us to create the conditions for companies to invest, innovate with ambition, and strengthen their international presence. For all these reasons, the motto of the Action Programme for the current AEP board's mandate continues to make perfect sense: 'Valuing Companies to Serve Portugal', so that we may be capable of bringing our country closer to the core of Europe's most developed economies.