The President of the Government, António Costa, said this Friday that despite living “difficult and demanding timesPortugal “cannot stop” in order to catch the “wave of recovery” when the crisis is over.
“These are difficult and demanding times, but we must not stop. We need to create the conditions and the trust so that investments come true. When this crisis passes, as the most critical situation of Covid-19 passed, we must be able to catch the wave of recovery”, said António Costa.
In Trofa, in the Porto district, where Bial visited, the President of the Government praised the pharmaceutical company and used it as an example to convey messages about the need to overcome the crisis or the importance of investing in science and modernization.
“Between 2019 and 2022 we will live, surely, the most challenging and atypical two years of our lives. The easiest thing was to stop and there were many times that we had to stop to protect the health of others. Bial did not stop. Surely it is an example for the moment we live in now. Times are demanding, but we have to move on”, said the minister.
In a speech after a visit to the Bial facilities, a tour that included the inauguration of the expansion of the industrial building and the antibiotic production unit, António Costa mentioned that Portugal “is the country of the European Union (EU) that, this year, fastest growing in the whole EU“.
“And 83% of the Portuguese companies that expressed intention to invest in 2023 maintain this intention or they try to accelerate the investment”, he added.
With the ministers and the minister of Economy, Health and Science in the audience, in addition to several businessmen and leaders of institutions linked to health, António Costa gave the clues that make possible the “significant leap” in the country’s development.
The governor began by viewing investment in science as “essential“, to add technological modernization and commitment to the global market.
“If we want to make a significant leap forward in our development, if we want to meet the goal set in our medium-term agreement in terms of social agreement to increase the productivity of our companies by 2% per year, it is crucial to invest in science, in modernization technology and producing for a market that is not our market of 10 million, but the global market”, he analyzed.
The prime minister has recalled the objective that he assumed with the EU that, in 2030, Portugal is investing 3% of its Gross Domestic Product in research and development, a commitment that points, in a third, to public entities and in two thirds to private sector companies.
“To walk this path, we have to work now. We have eight years to reach this goal in 2030 and if we managed to achieve it in seven years, it would be fantastic for the country”, he said, returning to the topic of the current crisis and the country’s need to know how to resist it.
“It is worth resisting the pressure of the crisis, facing the pressure of the crisis and investing. We have to get out of this crisis stronger than we were before“, he added.
Finally, Costa pointed out that, “without protectionism”, Europe and Portugal must reinforce their autonomy and their own production of basic necessities.
“The EU, first with Covid-19 and now with the war unleashed by Russia against Ukraine, has understood that value chains have to be shorter. We fully understand the risks of having a single company on the Asian continent that produces 90% of the active ingredients for vaccines. Europe and Portugal must have the capacity to produce the necessary goods without running the risk of becoming dependent on interruptions in supply chains”, he concluded.
Source: Observadora
