Projects "will generate 9,077 jobs, of which 6,230 will be highly qualified, with an associated investment of 1.3 billion Euros," the Government indicated.
The Government signed 18 new contracts for the Mobilizing Agendas and Green Agendas for Business Innovation, under the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP), which will generate 9077 jobs, 6230 of which are highly qualified, with an associated investment of 1.3 billion euros in areas as diverse as health, aeronautics and space automotive, the economy of the sea, or additive manufacturing, among others.
"This program is a true springboard for the transformation of the Portuguese economy. Today 18 new contracts were signed which, added to the 13 already underway, involve 756 companies and 86 entities in the scientific system," said Prime Minister António Costa, who presided over the signing of the new batch of contracts, accompanied by the Minister of Economy and Sea, António Costa Silva, and the Secretary of State for the Economy, João Neves.
The Prime Minister recalled that this year, after the pandemic, "we are a country that is recovering in a sustained way and that according to the European Commission we are even the country that will have the highest economic growth in 2022.
António Costa pointed out that more than looking to 2022, "we have to look to the future and imagine this journey, seeing what in 2025 and 2026 we will have again in the Portuguese economy. New products, new services, new production methods in areas where we did not exist and in others where we have always existed and where we will be able to do more and do it differently.
The Mobilizing Agendas
"What these agendas allow is that in each of these new activities we add value where we had no value, and in the activities we were already developing, we add value to the value we already produce. And this is what allows us to get closer to the most developed countries," said the Prime Minister, adding that "if we want to converge with the European Union, in the weight of wages and national wealth and have more and better jobs, we must have companies with products and services of higher added value, because only then is employment sustainable and the increase in wages is also possible.
The Prime Minister explained that the core of the mobilizing agendas "is precisely that we have created the conditions that made it essential to create consortia that, first of all, give scale and help solve one of the problems we have in our business fabric. Here we have hundreds of companies, large, small, and medium-sized companies that have associated themselves".
The initial allocation was 930 million euros, the final allocation is 3 billion euros. We had to more than triple the allocation to respond to the enormous mobilization that the business fabric and the scientific system had to present us with a set of projects that mean an investment of more than 7 billion euros in the Portuguese economy between 2022 and 2026.
The first phase
The first 13 contracts were signed last July 23rd, when 612 million Euros in non-repayable funds were allocated, of which 62% went to companies and 38% to the research and innovation system.
Of the 64 consortia that passed the first phase, the international jury selected 51, covering a total of 1,226 entities, including 933 companies, 60% of which are Small and Medium Enterprises, and 111 entities from higher education and the science or technology system.
At the public presentation of the 51 projects that were selected by the jury, the Prime Minister said that the agendas will receive three billion euros in public support, which means the use of the additional Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) money of 1.6 billion.
2030
"By 2030, these Agendas should effectively contribute to the increase of exports of goods and services, as well as to the significant increase of investment in R&D and to the reduction of CO2 emissions," António Costa stressed.
With the 18 new contracted agendas, about 20 projects are still missing. All the investments planned for the mobilizing agendas must be completed and with results achieved by the end of 2025.
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