António Costa wants Portugal to "ride the crest of the wave" into the fourth Industrial Revolution.
The Prime Minister was in Leiria to launch ‘Indústria 4.0’, a package of training and innovation initiatives to propel the country’s businesses into the forefront of their sectors.
One thing that eveyrone at the launch agreed on was the PM’s insistence that “it is not possible to attract and keep talent with a policy of low wages, based on precariousness."
Government advisors chose Leiria to launch its ‘Indústria 4.0’ strategy with Costa in full flow as he talked of the "fourth Industrial Revolution"and Portugal leading role.
"This is the first revolution where Portugal is not in a disadvantaged position. In the others, either because of our geographic position or because of a lack of raw materials, we were always at a disadvantage," said the beaming PM.
"On the contrary," António Costa emphasised, "this is the first industrial revolution that comes at a time when we have the basic ingredients to be on the crest of the wave: we have a good communications technology infrastructure and what is fundamental - a set of highly qualified staff, dynamic universities and polytechnics, and an entrepreneurial network capable of using technology."
Leiria polytechnic has wanted University staus for a while now and Costa insistence that it was one of the IT hot-houses in the country was not coupled with an announcement that the poly would be upgraded.
The reason Leiria was chosen as a platform for the PM’s technology street cred, possibly had more to do with the fact that it’s the home town of João Vasconcelos, the Secretary of State for Industry and of the Minister of Economy, Manuel Caldeira Cabral.
The PM was on a roll as technology is one of his uncontestable themes. He claimed that Leiria "is one of the regions of the country that for many years has had a dynamic business fabric with a great capacity for internationalisation and above all, a capacity to understand how knowledge is fundamental and how to absorb this knowledge and transform it into added value."
Costa spoke to an audience of big and small business owners and ended by demanding "a new model of development" for the country, which "allows us to realise, once and for all, that our future is to value ourselves from pre-school onwards and apply the knowledge from State activity to the service sector, through agriculture and industry."
The PM’s great plan involves 60 measures for 50,000 companies with 20,000 workers being trained in digital technology.
Under these measures, up to €4.5 billion is ‘expected’ to be injected into the economy over the next four years.
Since the plan first was launched, ten months have passed but this time has not been wasted.
"To prepare Portuguese companies for Indústria 4.0, the Government has been working since last April with more than 200 entities and companies in working groups from different sectors including, agro-industry, retail, tourism and automotive.
The companies in question are a mix of market leaders and start-ups fitting for the 4th Industrial Revolution.
