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Brazil Ministry of Science and Technology
The central agency for science and technology in Brazil is the
Ministry of Science and Technology, which includes the CNPq and
Finep. This ministry also has direct supervision over the National
Institute of Space Research (Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais--INPE),
the National Institute of Amazon Region Research (Instituto Nacional
de Pesquisas da Amazônia--INPA), and the National Institute
of Technology (Instituto Nacional de Tecnologia--INT). The ministry
is also responsible for the Secretariat for Computer and Automation
Policy (Secretaria de Política de Informática e Automação--SPIA),
which is the successor of the SEI .
The Ministry of Science and Technology, which the Sarney
government created in March 1985, was headed initially by a
person associated with the nationalist ideologies of the past. Although
the new minister was able to raise the budget for the science and
technology sector, he remained isolated within the government and
had no influence on policy making for the economy. In addition,
inflation brought the science and technology budget to extremely
low levels.
With the new ministry, the science and technology agencies increased
in size but lost some of their former independence and flexibility,
and they became more susceptible to patronage politics. Most of
the resources of the CNPq were channeled to fellowship programs
that had no clear procedures for quality control and no mechanisms
to make the fellows active in the country's science and technology
institutions. New groups competed for resources and control of the
country's agencies of science, technology, and higher education.
These groups included political parties, unionized university professors
and employees, scientific societies, and special interest groups
within the scientific and technological community. The SBPC (Brazilian
Society for Scientific Development) shed its image as a semi-autonomous
association of scientists to become an active lobbyist for more
public resources and the protection of national technology from
international competition.
Data as of April 1997
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