Socialist Party (PS) politicians in Faro have questioned why the Algarve has been left out of the six strategic business areas announced by the Government this week.
Portugal’s Socialist Party, as well as local PSD MP Cristóvão Norte, are putting pressure on Lisbon following the Algarve’s exclusion from the list of locations where the Government plans to establish six ‘major strategic business areas’, and is seeking clarification on the criteria used to select the territories.
As was announced earlier this year, the Government wants to prepare a number of very large business areas, with crucial infrastructure such as roads, electricity, water, telecommunications, and environmental requirements all dealt with, in a bid to attract investors to these properly serviced industrial zones. The hope is that this will make Portugal, especially its less economically-vibrant areas, more competitive when trying to attract major projects.
In a question addressed to Economy and Territorial Cohesion Minister Manuel Castro Almeida, Socialist MPs have asked for details of the “criteria that will determine the location of the six major strategic business areas announced by the Government for the installation of major investments”.
The PS has specifically questioned “the exclusion of the Algarve from this initiative”, arguing that the measure is important for the “competitiveness of the Portuguese economy, attracting investment and territorial cohesion”. The party says it is “worrying” that the Government announced the creation of six strategic business areas “without making public the criteria that will determine the choice of locations”.
The six areas were announced in July, with two planned for the North, two in the Centre, one in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, and one in the inland Alentejo region. Socialist MPs are keen to figure out the “objective reason” why the Algarve was left out in the cold.
The party also wants to know more about the nitty-gritty of what role municipalities and intermunicipal communities will play, whether they will be able to submit applications, what timetable is envisaged and what mechanisms will be put in place to ensure transparency, and equal treatment between the different territories.
Back in July, minister Castro Almeida said that Global Parks, a company belonging to Portugal’s Agency for Investment and Foreign Trade (AICEP), would promote the business areas, while the locations would be decided by the local bodies (the CCDRs). The Government would be responsible for securing funding for the infrastructure works.
Vítor Neto, president of the NERA, the Algarve Regional Business Association, has also expressed surprise at the region’s exclusion. Speaking to local newspaper Jornal do Algarve, he said the Algarve’s economic weight should be taken into account when strategic business areas are being determined, and admitted that the announcement had heightened his concerns about the Government’s approach.
“I was surprised by this information, if the Algarve is being excluded,” Vítor Neto said. Given “the weight of the Algarve” in the national economy, he added, he could not understand why the region “is not considered a strategic business area”.
Despite the Algarve not appearing in the geographical distribution announced by the Government, Algarve MP for the Social Democratic Party (PSD) Cristóvão Norte insists that the final decision has yet to be made.
“The strategic industrial areas have not yet been defined,” he told the newspaper, claiming that the six areas presented by the minister in July were “merely indicative”.
Cristóvão Norte said he had already raised the issue with the Government during a hearing of Parliament’s Economy Committee in July, submitting information on the matter and questioning the minister directly.
According to the MP, the response made the status of the process clear: “The process had not yet been defined and, therefore, was still open.” He added that the Government was working “across the country” to identify opportunities capable of accommodating the proposed business areas.
For the Algarve MP, however, the priority is not so much the political debate over who was first to question the region’s absence, but ensuring that the Algarve has a strategy capable of taking advantage of any opportunity that may arise.
“In the case of the Algarve, it is essential to diversify the competitive economic base, making it more plural” and creating “an economy that works throughout the year”, he argued.
Norte said such diversification should give the region “greater capacity to generate added value” and, consequently, “better jobs” and new economic opportunities.
“Reindustrialisation is a fundamental element in finding other opportunities in other sectors,” he said.
The MP therefore believes the Algarve should develop its own strategy for a potential strategic business area, based on the manufacturing industry, and capable of creating a new centre of economic development. Such a strategy, he added, cannot focus exclusively on tourism.
“We need to redesign our incentives system so that those who invest do not see tourism as the region’s only and exclusive opportunity and comparative advantage,” he said, arguing that “that is not the case” and that the Algarve has potential in other areas.
Among the sectors he identified were the maritime economy, agriculture, forestry and new technologies, alongside activities capable of increasing the added value of the region’s tourism offer.
The MP also believes the region needs greater collective mobilisation to overcome the obstacles that have held back its economic diversification. “That is what can, in the long term, transform the region and overcome many of the bottlenecks that we have accumulated in terms of development over decades,” he said.
“If we have something and we see that we are being excluded, then yes, we have to fight for it,” he concluded.
The final decision on whether the Algarve will be included or not,is likely to still be up for debate, however, it will largely depend on the process undertaken by the Government and the CCDRs, both of which are mutable.
José Apolinário, president of the CCDR Algarve declined to comment in detail on the issue, but said the regional authority was “following the matter closely”.
Source: LUSA / Jornal do Algarve
Photo credit: Estela Silva / LUSA
