The prime minister defended, this Tuesday, that science and innovation in Portugal must go “hand in hand” with the economy and companies and once again highlighted the retention of talent as a “neuralgic point” of the Government’s strategy for the country.
Luís Montenegro spoke at the presentation and inauguration of the National Council of Science, Technology and Innovation (CNCTI), a consultative body of the Government in these areas, and which is now chaired by Carlos Oliveira, former Secretary of State in the XIX Constitutional Government. with the Entrepreneurship, Competitiveness and Innovation portfolio.
In his speech, with the audience of the Ministers of Education and Economy, Montenegro defended that “science and innovation, education and qualification as a whole, are not an end in themselves.”
“Talking about investing in science and innovation has to be correlated with attracting investments, attracting talent from abroad, retaining talent, increasing family income (…) I didn’t want to be here giving a very political speech, but when we want Portugal to pay less taxes on labor income and company benefits, we are creating the conditions for the ecosystem to work,” he defended.
Montenegro, who previously made a brief visit to the Technical Innovation Summit space (which brings together projects with an impact on the economy in which the Higher Technical Institute participates), said he had met several young people, “some of them even with training abroad “They returned to Portugal and are here to stay, to take risks, to conquer and to sell from here to everyone.”
“And this is the crucial point of our strategy for the country, which we hope can be extended when we are no longer here. It is not something of an episodic context, of a few years, it is an alignment structure that we want to last for a long time,” he stated.
The President of the Government defended the importance of this Advisory Council that will allow the Government to make options to know what the country wants to achieve “within five, ten, twenty, thirty or forty years.”
“We want to be leaders and we have the competitive conditions to be leaders”he stated, referring to factors such as the “excellent strategic and geostrategic location”, the quality of educational institutions or Portugal’s connection with several continents.
Montenegro highlighted a measure already adopted by the Government to make “the country more attractive and competitive for those who bet their lives and careers on scientific creation, on research.”
“It is allowing our researchers not to limit themselves to their activity and power, at the same time, to have scholarships, to have support, to get involved in projects financed with public funds, to be in companies, to be partners in companies, shareholders of companies, members of governing bodies. corporate governance. There is no problem with that, nor is there any incompatibility with that,” he defended.
“We effectively want our science and our innovation to go hand in hand with our economy and our companies. And there is no problem with there being people in both places. None at all. On the contrary, as long as the closest research activities and those who apply them coexist in reality, we will have more results,” he argued.
Montenegro maintained that “research is also investing” and left a call to the national scientific community.
“I really wanted our scientific community in Portugal to be motivated to take risks. Motivated to take your knowledge efforts further. And, of course, be rewarded for it. It is a law of a just society,” he stated.
Source: Observadora
