Under the support allocated to Tourism Development o and Local Development, the Government of the Azores has approved, through the Incentive System for the Regional Development of the Azores (SIDER), a set of incentives for more than two dozen projects during the month of May, which corresponds to total of nearly 4.5 million Euros.

The approved projects, in the context of Tourism Development, comprise the areas of accommodation, catering and entertainment and will be implemented on the islands S. Miguel, Terceira, Pico and Faial, involving a private investment amount over one million and 400 thousand Euros.

Under the incentives for Local Development, various applications have been approved in a global investment that reaches nearly three million Euros for projects to be implemented on the islands of S. Miguel, Terceira, Faial and Pico.

These projects have already been approved and a set of amendments to SIDER, which have enabled SIDER to significantly shorten the approval deadlines well as the payment deadline regarding the incentives approved by the respective analysis committees, have already been put into effect.

According to the Regional Secretary for the Economy, these amendments “have allowed this incentive system to better respond to the needs of investors.”

In fact, “the average time for analysing applications, that is, the time between the submission of the application and the respective decision usually takes  2.5 to 3 months, which allows greater confidence in the entire system “ as a businessperson effectively knows that this is indeed the deadline for deciding on the project,” stated Vasco Cordero at a meeting with businesspeople.

Furthermore, the Regional Secretary for the Economy emphasises that “a work has been developed to speed up the payment deadline of the approved incentives.” At this moment, he stressed, “it is possible to make such payments within one month.”

Nearly 500 applications with an investment volume of 300 million Euros have been submitted since the beginning of the year, of which 420 have already been approved, corresponding to a private investment over 250 million Euros.