THE COMPETITIVENESS OF THE PORTUGUESE WINE SECTOR: AN IMPORTANT INDICATOR FOR A SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The agricultural sector and those related, namely downstream (transformation and commercialization), present several particularities where the concerns with the competitiveness and profit margins assume relevant attention, for a sustainable development. There are diverse factors that influence the competitiveness of these activities, where the productivities play an important role. Considering this framework, the objective of this study is to analyse the average and marginal productivities for the area in the Portuguese wine regions. For that, it was considered statistical information from the Portuguese Wine Institute (IVV) and for the period 2001-2016. These statistics were analysed, also, through panel data methodologies and considering the developments from the convergence economic theory. These analyses of the average and marginal productivities allow evaluating the flexibility of each region to deal with the costs in any sustainable strategic plan definition. Of stressing that, the results show that it is different the performance of each Portuguese wine region in terms of area productivities. On the other hand, the convergence analyse reveals that there are signs of divergence in the area productivities across the regions analysed and over the period considered, showing that the regions with better productivity improved it and zones where this indicator is lower became worse.