The Blue Economy Development Fund (ProAzul, FP) and the Institute for the Promotion of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (IPEME, IP) are increasingly working together to provide training and technical assistance to entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized enterprises operating in the Blue Economy, especially fisheries and aquaculture, with the aim of strengthening their management capacity and competitiveness.

To this end, the two public institutions signed a memorandum of understanding this Wednesday, August 23, in the city of Chókwè, Gaza province, which establishes the principles of cooperation and responsibilities for stimulating fishing and aquaculture production through training, technical assistance to entrepreneurs and SMEs operating in the Sea, Inland Waters and Fisheries sector, with a view to developing the country's economy.

The Minister for the Sea, Inland Waters and Fisheries, Lídia Cardoso, who witnessed the act, said that the signing of this memorandum is of the utmost importance for meeting the sector's goals, as it is one of the solutions for promoting fishing and aquaculture in the country, ensuring an improvement in productivity rates.

For their part, the two signatory institutions believe that the principles agreed upon could strengthen the management capacity and competitiveness of local businesses operating in Blue Economy areas, while at the same time creating conditions for the development of blue business incubators.

The Chairman of ProAzul's Board of Directors, Simeão Lopes, explained that this is one of the responses to the need to give fishing and aquaculture operators opportunities to receive the training they need to carry out their activities in a sustainable way.

"We have experience of financing that we have already done over the years, through the MaisPeixe Sustentável program and others. However, we feel that it's not enough to give money, we need to train these operators so that they can overcome the difficulties they face in implementing their projects," he said.

IPEME's Director General, Joaquina Gumeta, stressed that strengthening cooperation with ProAzul is an opportunity to nurture initiatives that emerge and sometimes disappear without even becoming known.

"This memorandum will help to make the productive sector more robust and launch guidelines for market literacy, with a view to internationalizing SMEs, in other words, linking the productive sector to the market, in order to develop our country," he said. (Proazul)