According to the North Structure report, a document prepared by the Northern Regional Coordination and Development Commission (CCDR), this was the region of Portugal mainland that “most converged” with the EU average in terms of innovation, between 2011 and 2019. Between these periods, the Global Innovation Index for the North increased from 83.3 percent to 92.7 percent of the EU average.
In contrast, the North is below the EU average with regard to patent registration, the percentages of the population aged 30 to 34 with training in higher education and employment in high and medium-high technology sectors and business cooperation with science, says CCDR-N.
Even so, the main exports continue to be low-tech products, which represented 41.8 percent of the total in 2019.