The regional director for Economic Cohesion affirmed today that, in the last years, the Azores have been coming near of the communitarian and national averages on the subject of "per capita" product, emphasizing that it has also been coming to increase the rate of activity in the islands, principally due to a bigger participation of the young feminine population in the labour market.

Arnaldo Machado was speaking in Ponta Delgada on “Insularity and Development”, in a group included in the I Congress of Geography of the Azores and XXII National Meeting of Geography Teachers.

The regional director told, on the other side, that the geography shows up, in the archipelago, like an impossible reality of being bypassed that influences, positively and negatively, the local development.

On the subject of positive geographical aspects, he defended that they result from differentiating characteristics that give to the Azores comparative advantages that it matters to be of use and to turn into competitive advantages, as it has been coming to happen.

For Arnaldo Machado, the nature, the natural heritage, the environmental dimension and the natural resources constitute some of its strong points creators of opportunities.

Regarding the economical policies, he agreed that there have been referred some sectors of strategic character, such as the tourism, the sea, the transports, the agrarian-industry, the fisheries, the renewable energies and the treatment of residues.

All these areas open new perspectives for the economical development of the Azores, being the sea an important source of wealth that can contribute decisively to the prosperity of the Region, he considered.

He, also, defended that the strategy of development continued in the Azores establishes, principally, in the modernization of the traditional activities, in the support to sectors that have known a remarkable growth and in that it disposes of comparative advantages, as it is the case of the tourism, and in the development of emergent sectors, under the transformations and alterations of the regional productive profile.