“We need a strong space program” – Brazil’s Minister of Science, Technology and Innovations

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – At the head of a Ministry whose budget has been suffering cuts and contingencies for years, Minister of Science, Technology and Innovations, Marcos Pontes, yesterday, June 10, again stressed the need to attract private investment to get strategic projects for Brazilian technical-scientific development off the ground.

“The Ministry’s budget has been shrinking since 2013 and, logically, the pandemic has not helped in this respect. Quite the contrary. There is no point in sitting and complaining, pointing the finger. We can talk to the Ministry of Economy, to Congress, but we need to understand that the budget challenges comprise all ministries,”  the Minister stated at the opening of the Structures for Financial Viability of the Space Sector event.

Organized by the Ministry’s National Secretariat for Financial and Project Structures, the seminar was announced as an event aimed at “thinking about alternatives for financing space projects and systems faced with a scenario of budget limitations.”

“We need a strong space program,” the Minister added, emphasizing that countries the size of Brazil, which began investing in the aerospace sector at about the same time, have been achieving more effective results, reaping the economic and social benefits of their investments in the sector.

“Our space program is quite outdated. We started together with most of these countries, but for decades our program has been lagging behind. It tries to take off, but it can’t,” lamented the Minister, the first Brazilian to participate in a space trip, in 2006.

“And it can’t because it was never given adequate priority from other governments. It never had an adequate financing structure. And I can say that for all the time I’ve been participating in our program.”

Stressing that investments in aerospace research generate results for vital sectors, such as telecommunications, Pontes said he elected the space program as one of the Ministry’s priorities during his management.

He listed advances, such as the signature of the Technological Safeguards Agreement with the American government, which enables the launching of satellites with American technology from the Alcantara Base (MA).

“We started with the mission of approving the agreement that would make the Alcântara aerospace center commercially viable. It was the beginning of a trajectory that is being followed with the launching of four satellites and a series of advances,” said the Minister, assuring that his team has been seeking to protect research units from budget restrictions.

“We have contingencies, restrictions, blockages, cuts, but within what the budget law foresees, we havebeen protecting the budget of research units since 2019, when I came to the Ministry. We have protected them, as well as the CNPQ (National Council for Scientific and Technological Development) grants, transferring cuts and restrictions to the Ministry’s administrative sectors,” the Minister stressed.