The Incentive Scheme for the Regional Development of the Azores (SIDER) has received more than 600 applications since its entry into force, which corresponds to an investment of over 400 million Euros.
With regard to the applications whose contract has been signed, the Regional Secretary for the Economy stressed the “implementation rate of 70 percent at the present moment,” which demonstrate that nearly 70% of the contract have started to carry out the respective investment, submitting incentive payment requests.
These figures were presented by the Regional Secretary for the Economy, Vasco Cordeiro, in Ponta Delgada on Friday morning during a meeting of the Regional Incentive Council and enable us to conclude that “the system is working and meeting the needs of regional businesspeople.”
The Regional Secretary also stressed that “despite the present circumstances, there has been an increase from 2009 to 2010 in the amounts of the contracts under the incentive scheme, rising from 69 million to 74 million Euros.”
In the context of the mid-term evaluation carried out during the last months of 2010 and following the changes introduced early this year to speed up procedures, “the 2.5/3 month deadline for analysing applications as well as the 1.5/2 month deadline for paying the allocated support will be maintained,” stressed the Regional Secretary.
According to Vasco Cordeiro, the meeting held on Friday morning not only served to assess how the system is working, but also to consider “possible improvements that may be adopted so that SIDER may better respond to the needs of businesspeople.”
In this context, said the Regional Secretary for the Economy, we have noticed that “some areas are being not sought after by businesspeople as we expected, such as the case of the applications under the quality and innovation subsystem.” “Therefore, it is important to understand why there is a low level of applications in this subsystem and what changes could be introduced in order to motivate businesspeople.”
Changes that might be introduced should not, however, “undermine the goals of the system itself.” That is, he explained, “it is important that companies applying for this incentive scheme are capable of following their own path so that they may be able to pay the reimbursable amounts of the allocated incentives, maintaining their strength, competitiveness and marketing capacity.”