Consolidation factors and stimulation in the State managerial sector

Abstract

In Portugal the State managerial sector (SMS) resulted mainly from the nationalization of the private economic groups existing before the 25^th April 1974. In the sequel of the nationalizations, it was reasonable to wait for the creation of the «State economic group» expected to substitute the previous private economic groups with the same operative capacity and better objectives. As a matter of fact, such thing did not happen. More than three years after those nationalizations, what one finds out is a complete disarticulation of intentions, practices and objectives that has much contributed to the stagnation of a critical area in the national productive processus. As a consequence from a wrongly defined economic democracy, vaguely identified with the liberalization of economics, the SMS is thus liable to be wasted in its social function of guiding economics taking the managing of its basic sectors as the starting-point. Nevertheless nothing of clearly irremediable is already achieved. Therefore, supposing an ideal situation of political power practice where one may detect a self-governed political will, sensible to the potentialities of the SMS as a privileged instrument of direct intervention in economics, the question of consolidating and stimulating the SMS may be seen as an essentially technical problem, the main components of which are expressed by the author. After this, a special reference is made to the technological policy of the SMS, considered as the priority factor for its stimulation. In the last part of this article, one remarks that Portuguese economy is now made of three sectors - public, private and foreign - strongly disarticulated, none of them playing the leading role systematically as to the others, but the SMS is about to suffer a processus of growing subordination and there are favourable conditions for giving the leading role to foreign capital.