Three-Way Analysis of the European Fund for Fisheries in Portugal: the Implementation of PROMAR’s Axis 4

Abstract

The PROMAR is the Operational Programme for Fisheries, co-financed by the European Fisheries Fund (EFF), which replaced the Financial Instrument for Fisheries Guidance (FIFG), which mission is to support the fisheries sector in order to ensure sustainable exploitation of living aquatic resources providing sustainable conditions in the economic, environmental and social terms. With information obtained from PROMAR, covering the period 2007-2014, and with regard to operations financed by the measure "Sustainable Development of Fisheries Areas" (Axis 4), we intend to analyze its implementation in Portugal. In this context, this paper aims to analyze the trends of the type of promoters and projects funded under PROMAR Axis 4. Covering the geographical area of intervention of the seven GAC in Portugal and for the period 2007-2014, will be highlighted the conditioning factors of the financed projects by analyzing and diagnosing the type of promoters, the implementation rate of the projects and the investment types, both regional and national level. With the increasing number of applicable areas, the analysis of multiple data through three-way methods has become attractive as an exploratory analysis tool. Within these methods, the Multiple Factor Analysis (MFA) when evaluating various data tables, discovers the existence of joint structures between them and, in comparison to other asymmetric methods, has the advantage of capturing more information, allowing greater interpretability of data. Thus, the use of a set of disaggregated data on the seven GAC in Portugal during the period 2007-2014, allowed the construction of three-dimensional data structures to an MFA, in which not only the national reality of the projects funded under PROMAR Axis 4 is detailed, but also useful information to the monitoring process and the decision on the European Fisheries Fund policies stands out.