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Sectoral Varieties of Adjustment: The Response of Portuguese Services Sectors to European Integration
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exchange and hence the ability by the central executive to quickly identify the problems of the sector at each stage and find out and implement effective mechanisms for protecting the interests of small firms. They have also served to sponsor tight coordination and compliance at the stage of implementation of sectoral policy.
Strengthening the Organisation: The Centralisation and Taxing of Revenues
After defining the sector´s decision-making structures, business leaders were concerned
with overcoming the corporatist legacy of financial weakness and dependency upon the state. Like business associations in other sectors, the ANF had inherited poor assets from the corporatist Grémio. The latter lived on short state subsidies and on the small fixed dues that its members paid. It had 6 to 8 employees and operated in a small flat in Lisbon. Lacking financial and political autonomy, the Grémio had never carried out the functions for which it had been created, i.e. the coordination of economic activity in the sector. The reformers needed a strategy to expand the wealth of the association and secure continuing financial autonomy. The solution they devised was to develop a core of services in the ANF that the large majority of firms in the sector perceived as crucial for immediately boosting their profitability and which they were hence willing to pay for.
16
Because of the monopsonistic role played by the state in the pharmaceutical retail
market, this strategy was intertwined with the development, by the ANF, of organisational links with the state, through the provision of important administrative services. By the late seventies, the state was, as it still is today, the major buyer of pharmacists and constantly late in payments. Pharmacist leaders realized that the ANF would secure an incredible cash-flow and hence the capability to make short-term investments with high returns if it convinced health care authorities to allow it to mediate payments to pharmacists. There were good reasons to argue for such centralisation of payments. On the one hand, it would rationalise bureaucratic procedures and lower costs for health care authorities -- as the Ministry of Health would have to deal with only one actor, rather than 2,000 of them, for billing procedures.
17
On the other hand, prompt
payment and efficient billing were so important for retailers, that the ANF could levy entrepreneurs for this service – and hence amass further resources.
18
16
This is how the President of the ANF for two decades, Joao Cordeiro, describes the key strategy of
financial success of the association (author’s interview with Joao Cordeiro, on January 2003).
17
Rather than billing the state every month for co-payments, pharmacists would invoice the association and
receive immediate reimbursement from it. The ANF would subsequently bill the state in bulk and charge interest in the case of arrears.
18
As we will see below, the ANF also developed other important services for retailers, namely the provision of
IT, vocational training, technical-scientific information, market and product strategy, financial assistance.
9
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| | Authors: Evans de Carvalho, Ana Maria. |
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exchange and hence the ability by the central executive to quickly identify the problems of the
sector at each stage and find out and implement effective mechanisms for protecting the interests
of small firms. They have also served to sponsor tight coordination and compliance at the stage
of implementation of sectoral policy.
Strengthening the Organisation: The Centralisation and Taxing of Revenues
After defining the sector´s decision-making structures, business leaders were concerned
with overcoming the corporatist legacy of financial weakness and dependency upon the state.
Like business associations in other sectors, the ANF had inherited poor assets from the
corporatist Grémio. The latter lived on short state subsidies and on the small fixed dues that its
members paid. It had 6 to 8 employees and operated in a small flat in Lisbon. Lacking financial
and political autonomy, the Grémio had never carried out the functions for which it had been
created, i.e. the coordination of economic activity in the sector. The reformers needed a strategy
to expand the wealth of the association and secure continuing financial autonomy. The solution
they devised was to develop a core of services in the ANF that the large majority of firms in the
sector perceived as crucial for immediately boosting their profitability and which they were
hence willing to pay for.
Because of the monopsonistic role played by the state in the pharmaceutical retail
market, this strategy was intertwined with the development, by the ANF, of organisational links
with the state, through the provision of important administrative services. By the late seventies,
the state was, as it still is today, the major buyer of pharmacists and constantly late in payments.
Pharmacist leaders realized that the ANF would secure an incredible cash-flow and hence the
capability to make short-term investments with high returns if it convinced health care
authorities to allow it to mediate payments to pharmacists. There were good reasons to argue for
such centralisation of payments. On the one hand, it would rationalise bureaucratic procedures
and lower costs for health care authorities -- as the Ministry of Health would have to deal with
only one actor, rather than 2,000 of them, for billing procedures.
payment and efficient billing were so important for retailers, that the ANF could levy
entrepreneurs for this service – and hence amass further resources.
16
This is how the President of the ANF for two decades, Joao Cordeiro, describes the key strategy of
financial success of the association (author’s interview with Joao Cordeiro, on January 2003).
17
Rather than billing the state every month for co-payments, pharmacists would invoice the association and
receive immediate reimbursement from it. The ANF would subsequently bill the state in bulk and charge interest
in the case of arrears.
18
As we will see below, the ANF also developed other important services for retailers, namely the provision of
IT, vocational training, technical-scientific information, market and product strategy, financial assistance.
9
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