The Regional Vocations of Ceará

Ceará has been divided into 14 state planning regions to strengthen the competitiveness of all municipalities in the state by encouraging innovation in its main production chains, generating and distributing wealth, retaining and attracting talent.

The Sustainable Development and Innovation Clusters Program aims to introduce innovations in the respective economic sectors with the greatest potential, whose specialized higher education and vocational training have a greater availability in each region.

Methodology
The studies for prioritizing the sectors followed a multi-method approach. In the first stage, based on secondary data, by sector and by planning region, a quantitative method was developed that resulted in a ranking of sectors by region. The data used were:

1. Share of GDP

2. GDP growth

3. Number of jobs

4. Number of establishments

5. Average Salary

6. Number of enrollments (technical, higher, and postgraduate courses)

7. Number of courses (technical and higher courses)

The definition of the weights applied was based on the Fibonacci sequence. Firstly, the GDP was considered as the most important variable, therefore with the highest weight (weight equal to 8), because the GDP best translates the representativeness of the sector in the region, given that it expresses all the final goods and services transacted in the economy, also capturing the impact of the formal and informal employment variables. Therefore, the GDP participation reveals the relevance of the sector, compared to others, and the growth expresses the dynamism of the activity in the region.

Secondly, the average salary, with a weight of 5, reveals the average income of workers in the sector. For the project, it is important to boost sectors with higher average income. Considering that the aim of the project focuses on the quality of the jobs generated, not necessarily on the quantity, weight 3 was defined for the employment relationship variable. For the variable establishments, weight 2 was defined, seeking to consider the effect of agglomerations of companies in the cluster.

The variable number of enrollments (technical, higher, and postgraduate level) was defined with weight 3, given the relevance of the population's demand for the courses offered. Thus, the variable number of courses (technical level and higher) was defined with a weight lower than 2, as it is a variable that is correlated with the number of enrollments.

For the qualitative phase, the technical analysis of members from different productive sectors, academia, government, and civil society in the regions covered was taken into account. Beyond this point, the potential for innovation and knowledge about the informal economy were considered, as well as information about important events and forecasts, which were not revealed by the data.

Click on the region to learn about the regional vocations of each one of them.

See here all municipalities in Ceará.

Multimedia
Live: Júlio Cavalcante, Executive Secretary of Commerce, Services and Innovation of the Secretariat of Economic Development and Labor (Sedet), and Ricardo Maciel, partner director of Ortusolis Technology

Podcast: Julio Cavalcante, Executive Secretary of Commerce, Service, and Innovation in Ceará