Argentine scientists march against Macri's budget cutbacks; Minister of Science threatens to quit.
Scientists, researchers, and students organized a march in front of the Argentine Congress in Buenos Aires Thursday to protest steep cuts to federal science and research budgets proposed by the right-wing Mauricio Macri adminsitration. Similar demonstrations were held in the cities of Bariloche and Córdoba, home to important federal research centers.
The Macri administration's FY2017 budget request included a new round of cuts for Argentina's three main federal scientific agencies: the Ministry of Science and Technology, the National Research Council (CONICET), and the National Space Commission (CONAE).
Their combined budgets had already been reduced from $1.3 billion in 2015 (the last fiscal year before Macri took office) to $950 million in 2016, and would, per the administration's FY2017 budget passed by Congress this month, decline further to $775 million - a 40% cut compared to 2015 levels.
Other research agencies, such as the National Industrial Technology Institute (INTI) and its agricultural counterpart (INTA) are also being cut in real terms by nearly 30%. President Macri was denounced last December by INTI staff for appointing Javier Ibáñez, a soccer hooligan and former municipal official with no credentials, as its director.
One bright spot was at CONICET, whose budget ($565 million) was maintained at current levels after its board of directors issued an open letter to President Macri on October 22. The largest research agency in the country, CONICET employs 20,000 researchers and technicians - nearly 40% of the nation's total, including the private sector.
Its budget is nevertheless down significantly from its high in 2015 of $750 million.
Brain drain
The cuts are steepest at the Ministry of Science and Technology itself, which had a $276 million earmark in the 2016 budget but only $114 million for FY2017 - a 59% cut. The Ministry of Science, established in 2007 by former President Néstor Kirchner, finances research and imports costly precision equipment for scientific use, such that while its budgets are assigned in pesos its real costs are highly dollarized.
"These cutbacks are very deep, and are creating the conditions for a renewed brain drain," the director of CONICET's Tucumán office, Daniel Campi, said. "This defunding process is entering its second year, but would probably take a decade to recover from due to all the research projects that would have to be discontinued and all the teams that would be broken up."
An estimated 15,000 scientists, engineers, and technicians emigrated from Argentina between the dictatorship of Gen. Juan Carlos Onganía, which fired 1,400 academics in 1966 for political reasons, and the 2001-02 economic crisis. One of the policy centerpieces of the Ministry of Science, the Roots Program, led to the return of over 1,300 scientists to Argentina since its inception in 2003. The program is, for the 2017 fiscal year, being largely defunded.
Out of orbit
Argentina's budding satellite program, lauded by NASA as "the leader in its field in Latin America" after its successful manufacture of two communications satellites (ARSAT 1 and 2) in 2014 and 2015, has also been put on the chopping block by Macri. The CONAE budget was slashed from $170 million in FY2016 to $97 million next year, and work on the ARSAT 3 and 4 satellites, cancelled.
Foreign firms have meanwhile been given permits for new ground stations in Argentina, further undermining ARSAT's viability.
Science and Technology Minister Lino Barañao, who has held the post since its establishment in 2007 and was the only prominent official retained by Macri from his predecessor, former President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, stated that "if funds are not forthcoming, it will be very difficult for me to stay on. I can't be complict in the destruction of something so important for the nation as well as for me personally."
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Defendamos la ciencia - Defend science[/center]