With less than two months to go before the end of the year, president Jair Bolsonaro (no party) must return to the budget of the MCTI (Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation) less than half of the R$ 600 million cut by the economy in October.
The scissors were approved by Congress, at the request of Paulo Guedes, with the knowledge of Planalto, and generated a crisis in the government with open criticism from the minister-astronaut, Marcos Pontes. The scientific community complains that the cut could make research in the country unfeasible.
The government is working on the text of a project (PLN) to make a new allocation of resources for this year, which must still be sent to Congress. There are two amounts in circulation at Palácio do Planalto: R$ 278 million and R$ 150 million.
Deputy Aliel Machado (PSB-BR), president of the Chamber’s Science and Technology Commission, said that the Ministry of Economy worked last week with the forecast of returning R$ 273 million to Science and Technology.
“The cut is affecting the entire budget of the folder, including public notices already published”, pointed out Machado. “We hope to vote this week. This is the result of the meeting we held with the Ministry of Economy and it is an achievement, we will recover a significant part.”
According to the deputy, part of the amount would be earmarked for testing phase 3 of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by the ministry, so it had not yet been fully committed.
According to government interlocutors working on this proposal, the idea is to create a device forcing the minister to spend part of the money just on the payment of scholarships.
Even if Bolsonaro returns funds to the MCTI, the amount will still be far below the amount withdrawn. If the intention of refunding less than R$ 200 million prevails, the CNPq (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) may run out of resources to fund researchers.
The body linked to the MCTI has already launched the Universal Notice, the main call for research grants in the country, which involves 30,000 researchers, at a cost of R$250 million. Today there is only R$ 50 million in cash.
On October 15, the president of the CNPq, Edvaldo Vilela, spoke of the importance of restituting these resources and called the cut a “fool”.
“We need to get together and take a stronger, joint action, because the adversities are very great. And we are advancing very little, and suddenly we get tripped up like that which happened there, very improvised,” he said at the SBPC event (Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science).
Against the background of the cut in the ministry is the fierce competition behind the scenes of the government for resources one year before the election. The R$ 600 million were transferred to the Ministries of Education, Communications, Health, Citizenship, Agriculture and Regional Development.
The latter, under the command of Rogério Marinho, took the biggest share: R$ 150 million. The portfolio is one of the government’s main bets for the election.
The cut triggered a crisis at the highest levels of government. Marcos Pontes was asked by his colleagues at the Esplanada and by the president himself to “play together”.
He called the cuts misguided and illogical, and said he had considered leaving the government because of the measure. After the pressure, he avoided manifesting himself in public.
While this year’s resources are still on hold, the scientific community is also seeking to mobilize to guarantee next year’s budget.
The SBPC and seven other entities that make up the Executive Committee of the Science and Technology Initiative in Parliament sent a letter to the Mixed Budget Commission asking for the refund and correction of the slice allocated to research in the country.
“We hope that the Mixed Budget Commission will help to recover the National Science and Technology System, hampered by successive budget cuts. Science, Technology and Innovation are essential elements for the country to find a sustainable way out of the crisis in which it finds itself”, he says the text.
.
