SUNS 4303 Friday 16 October 1998
LATIN AMERICA: MORE FUNDS FOR TECHNOLOGY, BUT STILL WAY BEHIND
Montevideo, Oct 15 (IPS/Daniel Gatti) -- The five southernmost countries in Latin America have been spending more on science and technology and now account for three-quarters of the region's
expenditure in that area, but they still lag behind other parts of the world.
According to a study by the Redes Group - made up of several universities in the MERCOSUR sub-region - Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay allocated about $7.625 billion to science and technology in 1995. This was 76% of the combined allocation of South and Central America.
Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay make up Mercosur (the Southern Cone Common Market), while Chile is an associated state.
The amount they allocated, however, was just 6% of the $128 billion the European Union (EU) earmarked for science and technology, and four percent of the 189-billion-dollar allocation by the members of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) - Canada, the United States and Mexico.
The study, published by the National University of Quilmes in Argentina, points out that between 1990 and 1996, MERCOSUR almost doubled its spending on science and technology. The amount
increased by 69 percent in South and Central America as a whole, by 22 percent in NAFTA and by 16 percent in the European Union.
Brazil, by far the largest of the five countries, accounts for 77% of their combined funding for scientific and technological research, Argentina 16 percent, Chile six percent and Uruguay less
than one percent. Paraguay spends so little on research that the Redes Group left it out.
Chile, which is not a member but has an association agreement with MERCOSUR, was the country in the so-called 'Mercosur Area' where investment in science and technology increased the most in
1990-1996 (181 percent) followed by Argentina (109 percent) and Brazil (91 percent).
While investment in the sector came up to 2.37 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in NAFTA in 1995, and 1.85 percent in the EU, in South and Central America, it was just 0.63 percent.
The corresponding percentage in the MERCOSUR Area was 0.78: Brazil (0.87 percent); Chile (0.64); Argentina (0.46) and Uruguay (0.29).
The disparity between Latin America and the industrialised regions of the world is even greater when such investment is expressed in per capita terms: NAFTA (493 dollars per person); EU (343); South and Central America (22 dollars).
The Mercosur Area average was 37 dollars per person.
"In all of the countries surveyed, per capita expenditure increased throughout the 90s, ranging from 77 percent (in Brazil) to 157 percent (in Chile), while in all of MERCOSUR it grew by 81
percent," the report said.
The report also pointed out that in 1995 there were 99,836 researchers in the Mercosur Area - 64 percent of the total for South and Central America - as against more than a million in NAFTA
and upward of 780,000 in the EU.
Total annual spending per researcher in South/Central America is $64,600 ($76,000 in the Mercosur Area) compared to $164,000 in both NAFTA and the European Union.
Of the Mercosur five, Brazil assigns the most resources each year to its researchers ($108,200 per researcher), followed by Chile ($68,700), Argentina ($35,400) and Uruguay ($26,000).
The main funding agency for science and technology in the five countries is the government, although the report also noted a decline in its importance in the past few years.
In Brazil, the government's share went from 73 to about 70 percent between 1993 and 1995, that of state corporations declined from 8.4 to 7.2 percent, while the private sector's contribution rose from
18 to roughly 23 percent.
In Argentina, the state's share shrank from 52.7 to 45.5 percent during the same period, higher education's involvement increased from 19.3 to 21.8 percent, and that of the private sector jumped
from 18 to 23 percent.
In Chile, government investment in research and development went from 72.6 percent in 1990 to 66.5 percent in 1996. The drop was offset by a slight increase in funding from abroad, and a bigger
increase in private sector involvement: from 20.6 to 24.8 percent.
According to the study, 55 percent of expenditure in science and technology in Brazil goes toward the general promotion of knowledge, followed by agriculture, forestry and fishing (16.5). Just over five percent goes to defence, production and rational energy use, and industrial and technological development.
On the other hand, general promotion of knowledge represents only 17.4 percent of Argentina's total spending in the sector. Industrial development and technology, health, and exploring the
earth and the atmosphere take up between 12.2 and 15.3 percent.