DEVELOPMENT-MEXICO: Closing the Research Gap

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Pilar Franco

MEXICO CITY, May 18 1999 (IPS) - Mexico is taking steps to end the long- standing policy of ignoring research in the fields of science and technology – where only .38 percent of the gross national product (GNP) was spent in the past.

A law to boost scientific and technological research, approved at the end of April, is intended to stimulate the channeling of state and private finances toward the research area.

One of the problems is that Mexico allocates only 110 dollars per person on education – 97.2 percent less than does the United States and Canada, Mexico’s partners in the North American Free Trade Agreement signed five years ago.

Worse still, investment in research and development has fallen since 1994, when it accounted for .44 percent of the GDP, according to figures from the National Council on Science and Technology.

The new legislation approved on April 30 grants more autonomy of management to the 40 state research centres, created in Mexico 30 years ago, and requires that they participate in teaching activities.

The resources of those centres should be geared toward the training of professionals, in collaboration with the universities or institutes of higher education, says university professor Ricardo Gomez Romero, winner of the 1994 National prize in Chemistry.

“The enormous human capital that Mexico possesses, where there are highly qualified researchers, will finally be used to enrich the academic community” of the country, Ricardo Gomez Romero says.

The law thus addresses an “important part” of the country’s needs in the training of future generations of professionals, but that the scientific community is now hoping for “a definitive compromise as regards the (monetary) investments” in their field.

Mexico, with its more than 94 million population, has just nine researchers for every 10,000, compared to 125 in Germany, 135 in Japan, 120 in the United States, 80 in France and 30 in India.

Medical facilities are such that only 300 trained doctors qualify each year — compared to 20,000 in the United States where the population is nearly 270 million.

The president of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, Bolivar Zapata, hopes that the new law will open a “powerful window” for national development of science.

“At the same time, the law should encourage expectations of accelerated support for public institutions with the realisation of the importance of knowledge and research in the advancement of the country,” he says.

The new law gives a voice to the Mexican academic and scientific community and will also provide for coordination of efforts among the public and private sectors, as well as between the scientific and business communities.

Sixty-four percent of the industries in Mexico import the technical equipment they use and only five percent of the companies have state-of-the-art technology.

Investment by Mexico’s private businesses in research and development has stayed at minimum levels, because the companies avoid taking risks in a field that requires a long wait for capital returns, according to various studies.

“The most important point is to convince not just the government but society” to promote support for the sciences and provide greater fiscal incentives to whoever shares in the interest of knowledge, the researcher Rene Drucker emphasised.

Even before the law was approved, various deputies had warned that it failed to address the roots of problem, since it deals only with support of scientists and omits coordination and direct promotion of research activities.

At the same time, the executive power reformed the National System of Researchers (SNI), expanding from four to seven the fields included in the organ, created in 1984 and which groups 6,800 scientists.

In accord with the reform, the work of the scientists on technological matters will be considered in their continuation or promotion within SNI.

The researcher Alejandro Canales lamented the absence in the country of a “mass system” of scientists, as outside of SNI “there are few opportunities to create a robust group” of researchers.