PORTUGUESE PRESIDENT, Cavaco Silva, warned last week that Portugal did not have time to hesitate when it came to global competition.
Addressing students at Coimbra University, the President said globalisation produced winners but also losers, and that the question of the challenges of global competition could not simply be answered by an intensive and cheap manual labour force and low cost, poor quality technological goods.
Commenting on the current state of Portuguese research and development, the President said that the problem lay in ineffective and unbalanced investment, which was principally public. He also said that private investment was weak.
Cavaco Silva stressed the importance of greater co-operation between the academic world and companies, in order to better exploit the commercial value of the fruits of good technical and scientific research.
“As in other areas of our society, Portugal has evolved a lot in research and development, but we have to do more and better,” he said.
