Latest Portuguese cooperation programme with Cape Verde worth more than €120 million

The Strategic Cooperation Programme (PEC) with Cape Verde will have a financial envelope of over €120 million, but the final amount has not yet been defined, the secretary of state for cooperation said on Wednesday.

“As a principle, we never make programmes with amounts lower than those we executed in the previous period, we are now evaluating the execution rates, but the financial envelope will not be less than €120 million,” Francisco André told Lusa.

Answering Lusa on the sidelines of the signing of the protocol between the Camões Institute and TAP for the free transport of vaccines on commercial flights to Portuguese-speaking African Countries and East Timor, the secretary of state added: “the current programme finishes at the end of 2021, and we are now negotiating the future programme, whose outlines are not an imposition, they are the result of a negotiation, which is taking place in Praia, focused on the objectives of human development, including education and health.

On Tuesday, Portugal and Cape Verde began preparing a new Strategic Cooperation Programme (PEC) 2022-2026, which will be signed at a summit between the two countries later this year.

Preparation for the next PEC began in Praia, as part of a four-day visit to Cape Verde by a delegation from Camões – Institute for Cooperation and Language, I.P., headed by vice-president Cristina Moniz.

In addition to preparing the next CSP, the Portuguese mission to Cape Verde aims to assess the programme still in force (2017-2021), and whose indicative financial envelope was €120 million.

“The assessment that was made together with our Cape Verdean partners of the implementation of the current CSP was generally very positive,” stressed the vice president of the Camões Institute, recognising some delay in certain activities due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Justice, security, education, training, culture, science and innovation, health and social affairs, energy and environment, public finance and the private sector were the areas of intervention of the current programme, signed in 2017.

As for the new financial package, Cristina Moniz said it would be decided at the political level. The signing would be during the next summit between Portugal and Cape Verde, which should take place later this year, and the Cape Verdeans will this time be the hosts.

Cape Verde’s national director for planning, Gilson de Pina, said that the African country wanted to continue deepening the cooperation instruments’ sectors for the next five years.

“With the major reforms that the Cape Verdean government is making, we want to continue to count on the support of the Portuguese government so that we can materialise these reforms because we still have major challenges in the areas of education, culture, training, health and social inclusion,” he pointed out.

Concerning health, Gilson de Pina expressed the will of the Portuguese government to continue helping Cabo Verpe to “better prepare” and reduce medical evacuations to Portugal.

According to Gilson de Pina, the current programme was quite conditioned by the Covid-19 pandemic, but he said he hoped that the next one, from 2022 to 2026, would not suffer so much, improving what was not implemented in the one still in force.

The Strategic Cooperation Programme (PEC) is a memorandum that establishes direct support from the Portuguese government to the Cape Verdean state budget and is usually signed by the respective prime ministers during summits between the two countries.