The crisis will get worse, say scientists. Bureaucrats will continue to delay the distribution of EU funds. Will a control group at the Presidency use best practices?
We, engineers and econometrists use formulas to predict socio-economic development. It was easy for me to predict in 2005 in ‘Jornal de Negócios’, that the Lisbon Stock Exchange would implode in 2007. It was easy in ‘Público’ to predict the 2010 crisis in 2007.
In the PROS and CONTRAS on TV of March/01/2010 I said we were not in a crisis, but in a structural depression, which takes ten years. In Vida Economica, in 2017, I warned about the crisis that would start by the end of 2019.
This bazooka may become a shot in the foot.
1. The needy population can be given money. Companies should get low-interest loans. An entrepreneur who does not recover his company in five years does not deserve support.
2. EU funds are bureaucratic, forcing SMEs to use government-friendly consultants in order to receive coins, which arrive too late. One for agriculture is criticised even by Brussels. A Development Fund should be managed by SMEs, not officials.
3. The governments here do not use geo-effect analysis, as I used at the World Bank. If I invest a million in a company in Beira, how much will it be there on the 2nd, 3rd, etc. circulation round of that money. Example, if I lend to a sawmill, how much will it be to buy machines & materials there, how much in the country, how much in the EU. Good investment is what keeps, depending on the niche, half the value in the region and up to 20% abroad.
4. They do not use economic data by niche or contextualized data, but general ones, which do little to evaluate future effects in the sectors upstream and downstream of the supported company. Average says little, the decile is vital.
5. Use values from INE, which makes good statistical analysis with incorrect data collection. They say in Stanford, ‘garbage in, garbage out’. The data for each association is good and the data collected on the spot by a sample is laborious to get, but better.
6. The media influences decisions about the use of funds, but it conveys opinions, which comes from the Greek word creed. We use reflections, based on real data.
7. Railway infrastructure is vital, if innovative. TGV has long been replaced by Light-train in composites, lightweight, and requiring light viaducts. What counts is not the maximum speed, but the average, from the citizen's departure from home or office to the arrival at the final destination.
8. In 2007 I published 'OTA useless until 2020', after reading reports from engineers and studies with airlines. Today, with Light-Alfa at 260km /h, a study on the rising tides in 2030 and the potential of Beja for air cargo and low-cost flights, I would say ‘Montijo is useless until 2060’. There will be no more flights, but more passengers on each flight. The airport in Lisbon should improve the flow of passport and baggage control.
