Resumo:
This work examines the relations between the international technological
and productive restructuring process and the trajectory of Bahia’s
economical development, giving emphasis to the institutional and political
factors, with the objective of discussing the possibility, the necessity and
the program conditions for the inclusion, in the regional development
strategy, of the economical sectors, which utilize knowledge intensively,
among which it takes software as the object of analysis.
Historically the development of Bahia is characterized by a paradox
between an expressive economical performance – the 6th GDP in the
country – and a precarious social situation – the 22nd Human
Development Index-M among the 27 Brazilian states. At the root of this
paradox there is a strategy for development centered practically in an
exclusive way of attracting exogenous investment blocks, that are specific
and concentrated, which are maintained essentially isolated from the
economic and technological dynamic of the region, and are subordinated
to dynamics and chains of decision which are external to the local
institutions.
The economy of Bahia was taken, by this strategy, essentially as an
instrument for a specific amalgam of local and national interests which
made feasible and reproduced a radical process of concentration of the
economical structure and power in the political space of Bahia.
In this instrumental perspective – still ambiguous in the first half of the
50´s, already established in the second half of the same decade, and
made radical starting from the political conditions favored by the military
coup d’etat in 1964 and institutionalized public policies of the state
throughout the 80’s and 90’s – neither the development of the competitive
capacity of the industrial sectors with local roots nor the intra-regional
distribution of the investments become relevant elements. On the other
hand, the methods for electoral reproduction of power – fundamentally
based on the authoritarian and clientele-wise use of the State and on the
efficiency of mass communication -, limited he necessity and the
possibility of the development of efficacious social policies, which could
make up for, even though partially, the exclusion aspect of the economical
strategy.
This political and economical trajectory, besides enhancing the precarious
scenario of the social indicators which characterize Bahia, implied in the
generation of significantly relative delay in the adaptation of its
institutional and economical structure to the new social-technical global
paradigm, and in the consequent atrophy of the development of intensive
productive sectors of knowledge, that are the basis of the global economy
which emerges for the next decades.
Pressures originated from the international productive restructuring, the
repositioning of the national policy for development, and the
modernization of the policies for development of the other Brazilian states
(which bring about the growing risk of losing relative space for Bahia in
the division of the national production), have created a context of
necessity of the reformulation of the strategy for the development of
Bahia.
From the perspective of the reformulation of this strategy, which certainly
involves other multiple and complex social, economical and political
issues, this work examines the possibility of promoting development of a
sector of software involved with innovation and competitivity.
For this exam, it builds and applies, in an experimental way, a model for
the analysis of the innovation environment of the software sector, based
on the international experience and on the context of the developing
countries. The target of the model is the companies, the knowledge
institutions, the public policies and their respective relationships.
The main conclusions drawn are that Bahia presently counts on a small
and limited software sector, that is not very qualified and with small
participation in the national market, with rare exceptions, and a
knowledge infra-structure with some significance, but isolated from the
productive sector and outdated in relation to the present infra-structure in
smaller Brazilian states.
On the other hand, this work identifies the existence of an economical
space in the GDP of Bahia for the growth of the software sector, and an
infra-structure for teaching, research and for entrepreneurship with
potential for the feasibility of this development. Above all, the work makes
it evident that in the last 3 (three) years, there has been the
establishment of a new public policy of the state for promoting the
technological development, which has been focusing specifically on the
software sector.
A strategy aiming at the strengthening of the regional industry for
software operates in spaces in the market that are very limited, which
demand at least a national perspective and the precise identification of the
opportunities and competitive advantages.
Factors associated to the absence of a project that may meet the specific
needs of the software sector, the structural limitations of the public
bureaucracy, the necessity of expanding the public investments, the
dynamic of the sector and systemic policies of the government that
frequently are non-convergent, and the fragility of its articulation with
society, nevertheless, may compromise the effective impact of a strategy
of this sort in the regional productive basis.