Horizon 2020: a practical guide to succesfull proposals

http://issuu.com/michaelarvanitis/docs/how_to_write_a_successful_proposal_/1

Michael Arvanitis [Perfil LinkedIn]

Michael is a technology consultant, lobbyist, science journalist and sales wizard. Michael works with strategists, lobbyists, engineers, corporations and sales managers to ameliorate the interaction between people and new technologies. Michael writes, blogs, influences, plans and talks about making technology more understandable for people and more profitable for companies.  

Michael has worked for many years in the academia and he used this experience in building successful start-ups in both the US and Europe. He has a deep knowledge on funding mechanisms, including Venture Capital, public openings and institutional funding. Michael has managed more than thirty international projects covering a wide range of social and economical activity.

Michael has served, and still does as a part time, as an evaluator and member of several committees at the European Commission for Research and Development. He is an active investor and founding partner of several Venture Capital firms in the US, Europe and Asia.

Doing Business 2015 : Going Beyond Efficiency

Doing Business 2015: Going Beyond Efficiency, a World Bank Group flagship publication, is the 12th in a series of annual reports measuring the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 189 economies—from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe—and over time.

Data in Doing Business 2015 are current as of June 1, 2014. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms of business regulation have worked, where and why. This year’s report introduces a notable expansion of several indicator sets and a change in the calculation of rankings.

Doing Business measures regulations affecting 11 areas of the life of a business. Ten of these areas are included in this year’s ranking on the ease of doing business:

• starting a business,
• dealing with construction permits, 
• getting electricity, 
• registering property, 
• getting credit, 
• protecting minority investors, 
• paying taxes, 
• trading across borders, 
• enforcing contracts and 
• resolving insolvency. 

Doing Business also measures labor market regulation, which is not included in this year’s ranking.

Main Findings

Doing Business 2015: Going Beyond Efficiency finds that entrepreneurs in 123 economies saw improvements in their local regulatory framework last year. Between June 2013 and June 2014, the report, which measures 189 economies worldwide, documented 230 business reforms, with 145 reforms aimed at reducing the complexity and cost of complying with business regulation, and 85 reforms aimed at strengthening legal institutions - with Sub-Saharan Africa accounting for the largest number of such reforms. Read about business reforms.

Tajikistan, Benin, Togo, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Trinidad and Tobago, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Azerbaijan, Ireland and the United Arab Emirates are among the economies that improved the most in 2013/2014 in areas tracked by Doing Business. Together, these 10 top improvers implemented 40 regulatory reforms making it easier to do business.

Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for 5 of the 10 top improvers in 2013/14. The region also accounts for the largest number of regulatory reforms making it easier to do business in the past year—75 of the 230 worldwide. More than 70% of its economies carried out at least one such reform.

For the first time this year, Doing Business collected data for 2 cities in 11 economies with more than 100 million inhabitants. The economies are: Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Russian Federation, and the United States. The added city enables a subnational comparison and benchmarking against other large cities. Differences between cities are more common in indicators measuring the steps, time and cost to complete a standardized transaction where local agencies play a larger role, finds the report.

Case studies highlighting good practices in 8 of the areas measured by Doing Business indicator sets are featured in the report: the growing efficiency of company registries in starting a business; zoning and urban planning in dealing with construction permits; measuring quality of land administration in registering property; importance of registries in getting credit; going beyond related-party transactions in protecting minority investors; trends before and after the financial crisis in paying taxes; judicial efficiency supporting freedom of contract in enforcing contracts; and measuring strength of insolvency laws in resolving insolvency. See all case studies.

The report this year expands the data in three of the 10 topics covered, with further plans to expand on five topics in next year’s report. The Doing Business rankings are now based on a distance to the frontier measure. Each economy from the 189 economies measured is evaluated based on how close their business regulations are to the best global practices. A higher score indicates a more efficient business environment and stronger legal institutions.

African Development Report 2014 – “Leveraging Regional Integration for Inclusive Growth”

Africa’s regional integration has been a key economic and political aspiration since the independence decade of the 1960s – some 50 years ago.
It is also an important pillar for the work of the African Development Bank, which is celebrating its 50th Anniversary as Africa’s premier development finance institution during 2014.
It is thus opportune for the African Development Report 2014 to once again reexamine the imperative of regional integration for Africa’s development: looking at what has changed in terms of argument and facts on the ground in the past half century, and to what extent the pursuit of closer economic and political integration is still relevant for the continent.

The Report comprises six chapters:

1. the relevance of regional integration in a changed global context; 
2. the importance and role of regional economic communities;
3. the impact of regional infrastructure;
4. the implications of the interregional migration of factors of production, notably labour; 
5. regional financial integration and the platforms required to raise its impact on regional commerce and economic growth and; 
6. how best to link Africa to global production and trade through regional value chains.

The Report’s main conclusion is that regional integration is still a relevant pillar for Africa’s development, although the global context has changed greatly since the continental goal was first introduced in the 1960s. The challenge going forward is not so much the formulation of new policies but rather the implementation of those formulated in the recent past. This will require political resolve and heightened institutional capacities. The policy arguments and main messages of the Report are summarized below:

• Africa’s overlapping memberships in regional economic communities is not a critical constraint to advancing the integration agenda. What is most crucial is the presence of functioning formal structures that ensure that the regional relationships have real meaning. For RECs to undertake inclusive regional integration policies, it requires greater commitment from member states in implementing them at the national level.
• African countries must be better linked through roads, railways, ICT, power infrastructure networks, and ports and harbours. But regional infrastructure development facilitates inclusive growth only when it supports productive employment, poverty alleviation and the reduction of inequality.
• A “coalition of the willing” approach should be encouraged in advancing the management of regional migration, instead of merely relying on immigration control. RECs should recognize regional qualifications, encourage regional pooling of skills and coordinate annual immigration quotas according to skills gaps in national labour markets. Additionally, regional policies should include equitable access to quality public health care and education for migrants as a key provision. Reducing the costs of remittances would also improve the prospects for recipient economies and the people left behind.
• The development of cross-border banking, capital markets as well as other regional financial infrastructure in Africa could lead to the economies of scale required for economic takeoff. This will require a stable economic environment and the use of rigorous standards that should not undermine institutions’ capacity to innovate and meet the needs of the underserved.
• Firms are now seeking their comparative advantages in niches that supply only portions of the global demand for goods and services. In light of Africa’s recent high growth, a number of opportunities for local firms to increase their supply of inputs into regional retail supply chains and commercial food activities have arisen. The growth of trade generates in turn domestic employment. Regional value chains can be a key avenue for inclusive growth in Africa.  

Africa Sector Outlook - Dezembro 2014 - Recursos em prol do desenvolvimento

Research Setorial, Novo Banco

• A riqueza energética de África
• África do Sul / Setor Mineiro – papel central na economia
• Angola / Comércio – boas perspetivas de crescimento
• Argélia / Gás natural, ponto de rutura ou de viragem?
• Cabo Verde / Turismo – o motor imprescindível
• Costa do Marfim / O maior exportador de óleo de palma da África Ocidental
• Marrocos / O desafio industrial
• Moçambique / Gás Natural – concretizar a visão
• Indicadores macro-económicos, repartição sectorial do PIB e comércio internacional

http://www.novobanco.pt/site/cms.aspx?srv=207&stp=1&id=705957&fext=.pdf

Global Wealth Report/Databook 2014

The aim of the Credit Suisse Global Wealth project is to provide the best available estimates of the wealth holdings of households around the world for the period since the year 2000. 

While the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Report highlights the main findings of our study, the 156-page Databook underlines the extent of our analysis. The Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook provides detailed information on the evolution of household wealth levels through the period 2000 to mid-2014 at both the regional and country level. It presents our estimates on the distribution of wealth for over 200 countries. Based on this rich data, the Databook presents findings on wealth inequality in developed countries and emerging markets.

Research for the Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook has been undertaken on behalf of the Credit Suisse Research Institute by Professors Anthony Shorrocks and Jim Davies, recognized authorities on this topic and the architects and principal authors of "Personal Wealth from a Global Perspective," Oxford University Press, 2008. Rodrigo Lluberas has also been a very significant contributor to the project.

The Ibrahim Index of African Governance

Compiled by combining over 100 variables from more than 30 independent African and global sources, the IIAG is the most comprehensive collection of data on African governance. The IIAG [http://www.moibrahimfoundation.org/interact/] provides:

• A framework for citizens, governments, institutions and the private sector to accurately assess the delivery of public goods and services, and policy outcomes, across the continent;
• A tool to help determine and debate government performance and a decision-making instrument with which to govern.

The Mo Ibrahim Foundation defines governance as the provision of the political, social and economic goods that a citizen has the right to expect from his or her state, and that a state has the responsibility to deliver to its citizens.

Como elaborar um projeto de investimento credível

Original de João Pedro Tomásia Barroca [ http://www.portal-gestao.com/item/7533-como-elaborar-um-projecto-de-investimento-cred%C3%ADvel.html ]

A elaboração de um projeto de investimento completo, credível e objectivo, não é propriamente uma tarefa fácil, antes pelo contrário, trata-se de um estudo complexo, que deverá obedecer a uma estrutura específica, e que deve ser preparado e elaborado de forma cuidada e pensada.

Um bom projecto de investimento, não é um estudo que se realize em poucas horas, focando apenas linhas gerais, alicerçadas em ideias soltas, com base na intuição do empreendedor. O mesmo, deverá ser desenvolvido de forma bastante disciplinada, sustentado com uma investigação e pesquisa aprofundada, sobre as diversas etapas da sua elaboração, pois só assim será possível, transmitir a credibilidade desejada a um potencial investidor, e entidades financiadoras como uma sociedade de capital de risco, um business angel ou a banca comercial.

Presentemente, se pretende criar uma nova empresa, ou realizar investimentos numa empresa já existente, e caso tenha necessidade de recorrer a capital alheio, será obrigatório e indispensável a realização de um projeto de investimento, para obtenção do financiamento desejado.

Neste seguimento, faz todo o sentido abordarmos a estrutura ideal de um projeto de investimento, sendo que, este tema gera alguma controvérsia entre economistas, gestores, consultores e outros profissionais da área, pois não existe uma fórmula única, aplicável a qualquer tipo de investimento ou empresa.

Tendo em conta que um projeto de investimento deve ser composto por um plano de negócios e um estudo de viabilidade económico-financeiro, podemos concluir que, a estrutura ideal de ambos irá variar, consoante o sector onde a empresa está ou estará inserida, bem como os objetivos principais que o investimento a realizar contempla.

Partilho consigo, um modelo de estrutura para a realização de um bom plano de negócios e estudo de viabilidade económico-financeira que de alguma poderá ser transversal, a qualquer sector de atividade, e caso a mesma seja integralmente respeitada, permitirá obter um produto final de elevada qualidade.

Plano de negócios:

• Sumário executivo;
• Apresentação e caracterização do projecto;
• Apresentação e caracterização do promotor;
• Visão, missão e valores da futura empresa;
• Objectivos de curto, médio e longo prazo;
• Posicionamento do negócio;
• Análise do mercado e do sector;
• Análise da concorrência directa e indirecta;
• Plano de marketing;
• Análise SWOT;
• Análise PEST;
• Organograma da empresa;
• Análise dos principais fornecedores e parceiros de negócio;
• Avaliação final e controlo.

Estudo de viabilidade económico-financeiro:

• Pressupostos do negócio;
• Projeção do volume de negócios;
• Projeções do CMVMC – Custos das mercadorias vendidas e matérias consumidas;
• Fornecimentos e serviços externos (fixos e variáveis);
• Gastos com pessoal;
• Investimento em capital fixo;
• Investimento em fundo de maneio necessário;
• Plano de financiamento;
• Plano de tesouraria;
• Balanço previsional;
• Demonstração de resultados;
• Mapa dos Cash-flows operacionais;
• Avaliação da viabilidade do projecto (VAL, TIR e Payback period);
• Break-Even Point;
• Indicadores Económicos Financeiros (Análise dos principais rácios de gestão);
• Análise de sensibilidade;
• Conclusões sobre a viabilidade económica do projecto.

É importante mencionar que não deve esquecer os documentos a constar nos anexos, de ambos os estudos, como por exemplo no plano de negócios, a existência de um mapa de localização ilustrado da sua empresa, caso a mesma seja estratégica para o sucesso do negócio, um layout do seu espaço comercial, o seu curriculum vitae enquanto promotor, documentos de identificação pessoal, fotografias ilustrativas do produto a ser comercializado, como por exemplo um protótipo, entre outros elementos que sejam relevantes para sustentar a sua ideia de negócio. Por outro lado, no estudo de viabilidade económico-financeira, deverão constar todas as facturas pró-forma, propostas de orçamento, e outro tipo de pesquisas para recolha de informação financeira, realizadas pelo promotor e que comprovam o volume de investimento projetado.

Para concluir, se possui uma ideia de negócio e pretende materializá-la com a criação de uma empresa, deverá realizar uma pesquisa de mercado, contactando e reunindo com mais do que um consultor especializado em projetos de investimento que esteja devidamente habilitado para o efeito, pela sua experiência profissional, capacidade técnica e área de formação base, para recolher opiniões e pareceres técnicos diferentes sobre o projecto a realizar, e assim poder optar pela melhor solução tendo em conta o rácio custo-benefício.

Lembre-se que este é o primeiro investimento que deve realizar, talvez o mais importante de todos, na qualidade de futuro empreendedor, como tal deve agir de forma ponderada, sensata e racional, não se deixando iludir com facilitismos, atalhos, e valores despropositados para a prestação de um serviço sério e credível desta natureza.

Enabling synergies between European Structural and Investment Funds and other research, Horizon 2020 and other research, innovation and competitiveness-related Union programmes

Enabling synergies between European Structural and Investment Funds and other research, Horizon 2020 and other research, innovation and competitiveness-related Union programmes : guidance for policy-makers and implementing bodies / European Commission. Directorate-General for Regional and Urban policy. - Luxembourg : Publications Office of the European Union, 2014. - 121 p. : quadros

ISBN 978-92-79-38599-5

programa-quadro de IDT / programa comunitário / fundos estruturais / política comunitária da investigação / apoio monetário

https://infoeuropa.eurocid.pt/registo/000060580/documento/0001/

Elements of Europe's energy union | Georg Zachmann at Bruegel.org

he issue: European
Union energy policy is guided by three objectives: sustainability,
security of supply and competitiveness. To meet its goals in these
areas, the EU is updating its energy strategy with new targets for 2030.
The starting point for this is the assessment of the previous EU
climate and energy package, at the centre of which were the 20-20-20
targets for 2020. Although the EU is largely on track to meet these
targets, EU energy policy is generally not perceived as a success.
Recent events have undermined some of the assumptions on which the 2020
package was built, and the policies for achieving the 2020 targets –
although at first sight effective – are far from efficient.

Policy challenge: ;To meet the EU's objectives for emissions,
electricity supply and gas security of supply, well-designed European
markets could provide better results at lower cost than uncoordinated
national approaches. In other areas – such as energy efficiency and
supporting innovation – markets alone might not be enough. Europe should
thus rethink its quantitative headline targets for 2030.The proposed 40
percent decarbonisationtarget is in line with a stronger emission
allowance market, but the target for renewables should be defined in
terms of innovation rather than deployment, and the energy-efficiency
target should be defined in terms of encouraged energy and cost savings,
not the amount of energy consumed in a certain period. | Read more at
Bruegel
http://www.bruegel.org/publications/publication-detail/publication/846-elements-of-europes-energy-union/?utm_source=Bruegel+publication+alert&utm_campaign=8d474e2176-Publication+Alert&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1f233d52bd-8d474e2176-275713602

The issue: European
Union energy policy is guided by three objectives: sustainability,
security of supply and competitiveness. To meet its goals in these
areas, the EU is updating its energy strategy with new targets for 2030.
The starting point for this is the assessment of the previous EU
climate and energy package, at the centre of which were the 20-20-20
targets for 2020. Although the EU is largely on track to meet these
targets, EU energy policy is generally not perceived as a success.
Recent events have undermined some of the assumptions on which the 2020
package was built, and the policies for achieving the 2020 targets –
although at first sight effective – are far from efficient.

Policy challenge: ;To meet the EU's objectives for emissions,
electricity supply and gas security of supply, well-designed European
markets could provide better results at lower cost than uncoordinated
national approaches. In other areas – such as energy efficiency and
supporting innovation – markets alone might not be enough. Europe should
thus rethink its quantitative headline targets for 2030.The proposed 40
percent decarbonisationtarget is in line with a stronger emission
allowance market, but the target for renewables should be defined in
terms of innovation rather than deployment, and the energy-efficiency
target should be defined in terms of encouraged energy and cost savings,
not the amount of energy consumed in a certain period. | Read more at
Bruegel
http://www.bruegel.org/publications/publication-detail/publication/846-elements-of-europes-energy-union/?utm_source=Bruegel+publication+alert&utm_campaign=8d474e2176-Publication+Alert&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1f233d52bd-8d474e2176-275713602

 

The issue: European Union energy policy is guided by three objectives: sustainability, security of supply and competitiveness. To meet its goals in these areas, the EU is updating its energy strategy with new targets for 2030. The starting point for this is the assessment of the previous EU climate and energy package, at the centre of which were the 20-20-20 targets for 2020. Although the EU is largely on track to meet these targets, EU energy policy is generally not perceived as a success. Recent events have undermined some of the assumptions on which the 2020 package was built, and the policies for achieving the 2020 targets – although at first sight effective – are far from efficient.

Policy challenge: To meet the EU's objectives for emissions, electricity supply and gas security of supply, well-designed European markets could provide better results at lower cost than uncoordinated national approaches. In other areas – such as energy efficiency and supporting innovation – markets alone might not be enough. Europe should thus rethink its quantitative headline targets for 2030.The proposed 40 percent decarbonisation target is in line with a stronger emission allowance market, but the target for renewables should be defined in terms of innovation rather than deployment, and the energy-efficiency target should be defined in terms of encouraged energy and cost savings, not the amount of energy consumed in a certain period.

An Assessment of the State Aid Consistency of Financial Instruments Supported by Structural and Investment Funds (Regulation 1303/2013)

Last week I reviewed the new State aid guidelines on risk finance. This week I will examine the provisions on financial instruments in the new structural and investment funds regulation. The regulation was published in the Official Journal just before Christmas. Both sets of rules have been updated on the basis of similar principles. The primary aim of both is to increase the flow of funds to SMEs and other innovative enterprises by incentivising private investors to assume more risk or to commit more of their own resources [this is the leveraging effect].

However, in this article I also identify a peculiar inconsistency between the two sets of rules. It concerns the possibility afforded to Managing Authorities to invest directly into enterprises. Since, as shown below, one of the requirements for mobilising structural and investment funds is compliance with State aid rules, I will suggest that the only way to effect direct investment is the removal of the State aid element from such investment.

An Assessment of the State Aid Consistency of Financial Instruments Supported by Structural and Investment Funds (Regulation 1303/2013) | Posted in Latest Updates on February 14, 2014 by Phedon Nicolaides

What is Africa's ODA spent on? EURACTIV Infographic

Around 40% of the European Commission's Overseas Development Aid (ODA) goes to Africa every year. The continent has received more than a quarter of the €2.7 billion increase in the aid budget since 2005 and, in 2009, aid for trade to the African, Caribbean and Pacific States increased to €3.6 billion.

But where does the money end up?