VietNamNet Bridge – While the budget for science and technology development remains modest, it has been divided to too many different units and different sectors.

Where the money goes to?

Prof Dr Le Du Phong, former President of the Hanoi Economics University, has pointed out that the current mechanism on budget allocation for science and technology development is unreasonable. The budget is compared with a cake which is divided into small pieces, which are then given to research institutes, universities and scientific researchers, following the principle that everyone can obtain a piece of the cake.

The Hanoi University of Technology, for example, which is considered a big scientific research center in Vietnam, receives 17.5 billion dong a year for science projects.

Meanwhile, the Vietnam Labor Union, which is not a scientific research unit at all, receives 21 billion dong a year. The Vietnam Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, a business, also gets 13 billion dong a year for its science research works.

Especially, the budgets allocated for the units are even higher than that allocated for big universities, such as the Hanoi Agriculture University, which receives 11.8 billion dong, the Hanoi Civil Engineering University (8.6 billion dong), the Hanoi Economics University (6 billion dong) and the Hanoi Transport University (3.1 billion dong).

Professor Dr Nguyen Quang Thai from the Vietnam Economics Scientific Association, said the Ministry of Science and Technology (MST), in principle, takes responsibility before the National Assembly for the two percent of the total state’s expenses on science development. However, in fact, the ministry can only control the projects using 12 percent of the budget for science development.

Meanwhile, the remaining 88 percent of the budget has been put under the control of the Ministry of Planning and Investment and the Ministry of Finance. The budget has been allocated to ministries and localities. This means that the budget for science development has been going to wrong addresses.

The inspection tours taken recently have found out that local authorities have used the money allocated for science and technology development to settle other problems in the localities. Meanwhile, in other provinces, the budget has been spent for wrong purposes (50 percent).

According to the Ministry of Planning and Investment MPI, the investment on science and technology development in 2001-2010 amounted to 0.63 percent of the total investment capital of the society (0.53 percent for 2001-2005 and 0.67 percent for 2006-2010), or some 2 percent of the state’s budget.

Scientists believe that the budget reserved for science and technology development remains too modest, while Vietnam still cannot call for non-state investment sources for scientific research.

Also according to Phong, previously, there should be 45-50 special subjects to get a state-level project worth 1.2-1.5 billion dong approved. The number of required special subjects is now 65-100, when the budget has been raised to 2.3-2.6 billion dong.

Phong also said that scientists have to follow very complicated procedures to get money disbursed from the Ministry of Finance. Therefore, in many cases, they have to “fabricate” expense items to get money.

How much is enough?

Phong believes that the budget for science and technology development should be raised from 0.67 percent of the total society’s investment capital to one percent in 2013-2015 and to 1.5-1.7 percent in 2016-2020.

He went on to say that budget should be allocated to the units which really have the capability for conducting scientific research and technology transfer, while money should not be delivered to everyone.

Dat Viet