The Competitiveness Poles program has received 30 applications to date, involving more than 370 entities, among which 228 are companies, including SMEs and multinationals.
The program, whose motto is «Add to Compete», covers a total of eight areas pre-selected by the Government as priorities, such as fashion, energy, the automotive sector and ICT and electronics, which may however be extended to other sectors, and function of the quality of the applications, said Manuel Pinho, Minister of Economy, cited by Jornal de Notícias, when yesterday he chaired the presentation of applications at the University of Aveiro.
Of the 30 applications submitted in this first phase of the program, carried out within the scope of the NSRF, 12 refer to nationally competitive poles and 18 to regional ones, the so-called clusters.
So far, anchor projects as the technology center have been identified and are being evaluated. offshore (energy), the fashion center (fashion), Autoeuropa’s supply chain (car and mobility), translation research (health), rapid prototyping (molds) and the Lausanne tourism school (tourism).
The selected projects will be announced by the end of the year.
The contest provides for the allocation of incentives of up to 500 thousand euros per year for the national winning centers and up to 200 thousand euros for clusters.
