According to The Observador, Portuguese footwear exports increased by 8.2% in January, year-on-year, to 161 million euros, with companies expecting an improvement in business in the first quarter of this year, the sector association APICCAPS has reported.

According to the latest Quarterly Economic Bulletin from the Portuguese Association of Footwear, Components, Leather Goods and Substitutes Manufacturers (APICCAPS), “almost half of the companies (47%) believe that the state of business will be satisfactory, with a quarter even predicting that it will be good”.

When asked to compare the expected state of business for the first quarter of this year with that of the same period in 2024, the number of companies that believe it will be better is higher than those that believe the opposite (extreme response balance (ES) of +6 percentage points), indicating a trend towards an improvement in the situation”, says the association.

Published by APICCAPS with the Catholic University of Porto, the economic situation bulletin also highlights that “companies’ expectations regarding the state of business are positively related to their size, being clearly positive among large and very large companies (sre of 36 and 25 percentage points, respectively)”.

Regarding the limitations expected for the first quarter of this year, the association says they are “very similar to those that companies felt at the end of 2024”, with “the biggest difference being the increase in difficulties related to tax legislation, which 18% of companies expect to face, while only 13% say they felt them in the previous quarter”.

Although less frequent (9%), references to difficulties related to labor legislation also increased compared to the end of 2024.

At market level, there was “a small increase in references to the shortage of orders from foreign customers (from 63% to 65%), but an equally small decrease in those made to the shortage of orders from national customers (from 47% to 44%)”.

As for production factors, there was “a slight increase in concerns” about the price and supply of raw materials (from 34% to 35%) and a decrease in references to the shortage of qualified labor (from 13% to 12%).

Quoted in a statement, the president of APICCAPS says that we continue to live in “a time of great uncertainty, whether of geostrategic or even of a cyclical nature, which naturally penalizes highly exporting sectors such as footwear”.

Even so, Luís Onofre highlights that “ the last few months have already seen recovery for the sector , which exports more than 90% of its production”, and the expectation is that it will be possible to “consolidate this record in the coming months, which will still be tough given the external context”.

“Companies are doing their homework, investing in strengthening production capacity or in the internationalization process”, highlights the association leader, calling for “the State to do the same”.

“We need political stability, a government capable of making economic growth a national goal , placing all financial instruments at the service of companies, such as the RRP [Recovery and Resilience Plan] or Portugal 2030, to relaunch export activity”, he emphasises.

For APICCAPS, a reason for “particular concern” is “the fact that the main European markets – so fundamental for the Portuguese footwear industry – continue to demonstrate a lack of dynamic performance”.

After a year-on-year growth in exports of 14% in the last quarter of 2024, at the beginning of 2025 the footwear sector's sales abroad maintained the positive trend, with the most recent data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) pointing to a total of seven million pairs of footwear exported in January, worth 161 million euros, which represents a growth of 8.2% compared to the same month of the previous year.