Declaración
Pública
The 27 universities of the Council of Rectors of Chilean Universities express their deepest concern about the reduction of funding for Science and Technology contained in the 2019 Nation's Budget Law Project.
The CRUCH has repeatedly argued that the country's development capacities are seriously limited by low investment in Science and Technology, which only reaches 0.36% of GDP, well below the 2.6% average of the OECD. We now see with deep concern the eventual reduction of more than $32 billion in the 2019 Science and Technology budget, which represents 4.6% less than in 2018. This new scenario is causing great uncertainty within the CRUCH Universities, that carry out the 95% of research in Chile, thus compromising the future of knowledge creation for national development.
This is highly contradictory to the investment made by the country in the training of high-level scientists, who will not have the necessary funding to contribute substantively to the progress of Chile. The notorious stagnation of the budget for science and technology, the undisputed engine of innovation and growth, has a negative impact on our capacities to contribute to development and improve the quality of life of the population.
Our concern is heightened in the context of the recent approval of the Law that creates the Ministry of Science, Technology, Knowledge and Innovation, with broad national consensus, and whose implementation is questioned under current budgetary conditions. The scientific communities gathered in the Council of Rectors declare themselves in a state of alert and waiting for corrections in the 2019 Budget, which will contribute to reversing the current fragility of our National System of Science and Technology.
For this reason, we call on all the actors to reach the necessary agreements to improve the financing conditions of Science and Technology for 2019 and to propose as a country to project a gradual growth of the budget in the long term, which allows reaching the 1% of GDP. in R&D in the next 10 years.