Scientific research is being dismantled in Argentina. State investment in science and technology fell by 32.9 percent last year compared to 2023 – the largest reduction since 1972, when funds began to be measured.
According to the latest report by the CIITI (Centro Iberoamericano de Investigación en Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación) research watchdog, the spending of the national science and technology budget through to November was not evenly distributed either – some provinces suffered cuts up to 70 percent and 13 districts half or more. “The sharpest cuts were in districts like La Rioja, Santa Cruz and Formosa, where the virtual disappearance of the programmes of infrastructure, equipment and transfers led to real declines of 70.3 percent, 69.6 percent and 68.1 percent respectively. Tierra del Fuego and Chaco also saw their budgets cut back by over 60 percent,” specifies the report.
In Argentina’s collective imagination the main representative of the production of scientific knowledge is basically the CONICET national scientific research council, but in reality the sector is much larger. National state universities need to be added to the equation, as well as various agencies like the CNEA (Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica) atomic energy commission, INTA (Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria) agricultural technology institute, INTI (Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Industrial) industrial technology institute and CONAE (Comisión Nacional de Actividades Espaciales) space activities commission.
If one thing stands out in the Milei’s administration’s handling of science and technology since taking office 13 months ago, apart from the cuts, it is the budget underspending – barely seven percent of the allocated funds have been used overall.
According to CIITI’s analysis, CONICET saw 20.8 percent less funding last year, INTA 23.6 percent and the CNEA 28.8 percent. Research funds of national universities also contracted by 72.6 percent. The worst plunge was for the Innovation, Science & Technology Secretariat, with a decline of 91.7 percent. In summary, science and technology now represents only 0.208 percent of Gross Domestic Product (as against 0.302 percent in 2023, when it should have reached 0.39 percent according to Law 27,614).
“Today the national state has cut back the financing of science by 30 percent to minimal levels,” explains Roberto Salvarezza, the chairman of the Buenos Aires Province Scientific Research Committee. “The investment percentages for science and technology in Israel, the United States and the European Union are four or five times greater than ours. In Argentina we have three researchers for every 1,000 people in our workforce while developed countries multiply that number by four with 12.9. They comfortably top us in financing and scientific staff.”
To this, must be added the current brain drain of Argentine scientists, with many lured overseas by better offers and increased funding. Salaries have dropped by approximately 30 percent over the last year.
“We’re not going in the direction of the developed countries. What President Javier Milei proposes is a colonial country exporting items with low added value like oil or lithium, without adding value to our country’s assets. Clearly a model in which Argentina’s role is to be a supplier of primary products requiring neither science nor technology,” said Salvarezza, who served two years as Science, Technology & Innovation minister in former president Alberto Fernández’s government.
“There’s no novelty there, [late president] Carlos Menem did the same in his time,” said the former national deputy.
New depths
Resolution 10/2025 was published on January 9 in Argentina’s Official Gazette. It carried the signature of Cabinet Chief Guillermo Francos and granted special prerogatives to NationalInnovation, Science and Technology Secretary Darío Genua.
From now, the decree stated, Genua can review funds granted by previous administrations to scientific research, demanding their return with interest if not all were used. He may also define the closure of scientific programmes and rescind agreements not covered by the government’s “strategic plan for 2024-25.” He may also sue those who are considered not to have complied in any sense.
The presumed “strategic plan,” however, has yet to be presented to Congress. Currently it is nothing more than a draft posted on the X social network on November 14, 2024. It consists of merely four points without any objectives or description of the scientific and technological areas to be promoted or any profound analysis of the needs, opportunities, challenges, strengths and weaknesses of the sector.
The “plan” also runs counter to Law 27,614 for financing science and technology, promulgated in February 2021, but requiring for its implementation a new plan to be presented to and approved by Congress. But that plan already exists: it is the National Plan for Science, Technology and Innovation 2030, defining the priorities which the state considers should guide its actions.
The supposed Plan 2024-25, published in a tweet, ignores Law 27,738 unanimously voted by Congress in October 2023.
“What this resolution does is to delegate to the Innovation, Science & Technology secretary the attributes to decide on all the agreements signed by the previous Science Ministry, which today is the Undersecretariat for Science and Technology. We are not talking about research subsidies, that’s something else. We're talking about the contracts which had to do with federal programmes like Construir Ciencia, Equipar Ciencia and other minor programmes which the Ministry had launched to stimulate vocation in young scientists and the creation of science clubs,” sums up Jorge Aliaga, the former dean of the Faculty of Exact Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires.
“This resolution has various considerations grounding its decision, many of which simply refer to the economic crisis, the problems suffered by Argentina and all the attributes delegated to the government, whether by the mega-decree DNU 70/23, which was never overturned by Congress, or by the ‘Ley de Bases’ [mega-reform package] with its economic, administrative emergencies, etc.
“So based on all that, it also adds up that there is a 2024-25 strategic plan for science revealed in a tweet which establishes certain priority issues such as agriculture, energy, mining, innovation and health,” concluded Aliaga.
Genua may review the agreements and decide based on his analysis, according to the detailed situations.
“This comes along to resolve the problem which we have been denouncing all along about all the money not spent, those 70 billion pesos spent on those programmes in 2023 but not in 2024. Against the claims for that money they announced this norm, which in reality does not serve to carry out these programmes but essentially to liquidate most of them,” concluded the expert, a member of the CONICET board of directors that represents universities.
National and international concern
“Law 27,614 establishes that [spending on] science and technology should increase progressively until reaching one percent of GDP in 2032 and that the Science & Technology Ministry should be the authority of application. It further establishes that 20 percent of this increase should be destined to the programme to make science more federal, which in turn feeds the Construir y Equipar Ciencia programmes among others,” continued Salvarezza.
“In the 2023 Budget this programme to make science more federal counted on 49 billion pesos and was rolled over into 2024 when only 0.88 percent of that money was spent,” he summed up. “The officials are responsible for the implementation of the laws where they are the authority of application and not doing so exposes them to charges of malfeasance. It should be noted that Law 27,614 is in force, which is why they tried to suspend the articles of the law granting the fund in the frustrated 2025 Budget” bill process.
This draining of Argentine science financially, along with verbal aggression from members of the current government, have stirred some of the international scientific community. A letter signed by 68 Nobel Prize winners asking for Argentine science to be protected has been followed by articles in the respected journals Science and Nature, while only last month an editorial in The Lancet demanded respect for human rights while recalling what Argentina has done in the scientific area.
The state of Argentine science is critical as never before, these voices warn.
Privatisations
With this worrying panorama, concrete moves have begun. The Milei administration to date tends towards the privatisation of public companies related to technology, starting with the IMPSA metallurgical firm. Satellite experts ARSAT and state-owned energy firm Nucleoeléctrica are already in the crosshairs.
“I believe the whole system of science and technology is being drained. On one side the scientific-technological complex is being privatised and outsourced with the entry of foreign capital,” said Salvarezza. “At the other end investment in the system is being diminished, as we see reflected in the numbers of the sector.”
He continued: “The attack on the Argentine system of science and technology is complete, as such and on the terminals which could transform what the science system does into goods and services of high complexity, such as the nuclear and satellite sectors.”
Recently, one of Milei’s top presidential advisors Demian Reidel celebrated the design of a compact modular nuclear reactor christened ACR-300 on the part of INVAP being patented in the United States.
The science linked to nuclear energy, however, is much more than just a patent.
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