[News] President Sagasti: We will leave a structure capable of mobilizing and supporting scientific and technological development

[UltimaTexCS]

The President of the Republic, Francisco Sagasti, said today that his administration will leave the next government with a structure capable of mobilizing and supporting scientific and technological development and significantly increasing investment resources and the endowment of high-level human resources in this countryside.
 
Likewise, he announced that the Government will present a bill to the Congress of the Republic in the coming days, to elevate the National Council of Science, Technology and Technological Innovation (Concytec) to the role and level that correspond to it in this area.
The president made these announcements when leading this afternoon th installation of the Multisectoral Commission for Science, Technology and Innovation, created by Supreme Decree No. 025-2021-PCM to monitor and control compliance with the objectives of the National Policy for the Development of Science, Technology and Technological Innovation and issue technical reports that guide the updating of this policy to achieve the strategic vision in STI of the country.

The session was held in the Great Hall of the Government Palace and was attended by the head of the Ministerial Cabinet, Violeta Bermúdez; the head (e) of Concytec, Benjamín Marticorena, who leads the Multisectoral Commission on behalf of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers; the regional governor of Cajamarca, Mesías Guevara, representing the National Assembly of Regional Governments (ANGR); and 10 ministers and two vice ministers of State.
"As we have seen, during this terrible year of the pandemic, knowledge, science, technology and innovation have become absolutely key to face any threat and guarantee development," said President Sagasti.
He warned that without capacities in science, technology and innovation it is impossible to sustain a development process in the short, medium or long term and that, in that sense, Peru has a huge deficit.

“For 25 years we have invested practically nothing in science and technology and the recovery of the investment in this sector began in the mid-2000s. The first programs were launched that made them available to researchers, those who develop science, technology and do innovation, a series of instruments that made it possible to advance and partially reverse the neglect that had existed for many years ”, he indicated.
 
“However, despite these advances, Peru is still at the bottom of Latin America which, in turn, as a region is at the bottom of the world in investments in science, technology and innovation. We dedicate approximately 0.12 percent of GDP to research, development and innovation. The average for Latin America is 0.6, five times more, and the world average, especially in more advanced countries, exceeds 1.5 and up to 2 percent of GDP, ”he noted.

This “means that we are very behind in terms of investment, despite the enormous effort made in recent years by two or three funds, plus the work of Concytec. Furthermore, the estimates that have been made by international organizations and consultants consider that a country like Peru should have at least between 20,000 and 25,000 doctors of science and we barely reached 5,000, ”he said.
 
He added that this means that the effort to be made over the next few years, starting immediately, is enormous.

“Having witnessed Korea in some 15 to 20 years go from being an extremely backward country in the field of science and technology to world leadership positions, and having visited China in the mid-eighties at a time when I was just beginning to invest in capacities in science and technology, I can testify to the impact that investment in this area has had on the development of these two countries and what it could have in our country ”, he said.
At another point in his speech, the president pointed out that “the small budget that we have is concentrated in a few instruments, four or five, which represent a high percentage of the investment, we also have a large number of small instruments that do not have a minimum critical mass to be able to support the development of science and technology in the field in which they work 

 
In addition to that, there is an overlap of mandates and instruments between different sectors and many instruments apply to multiple beneficiaries. That is, the ways to support the development of scientific and technological capacity in Peru are very small, they are dispersed and concentrated at the same time, which is a paradox, and they are not really doing their job, there are also overlaps between different sectors, he warned.