The government has canceled one scientific funding program and is announcing another for 2026

The government announced this on Thursday the final withdrawal of the PICTthe funding line frozen two years ago that Conicet researchers and universities define as “support” of research in Science and Technology in Argentina. However, official sources are planning an addition as a replacement new funding in 2026For the time being only the call is started Support for Scientific Research (AIC)a financing line for projects limited to three areas: health, agribusiness and energy and mining.

Since a large part of the research in the basic sciences and everything related to the humanities and social sciences is excluded from the outset, and that only Projects that involve collaboration with a private individual (something that already existed through another funding program), voices were raised from the scientific community angry that it had suffered an unprecedented funding cut two years ago. The government uses several arguments.

Nobody disputes one point: PICT subsidies (the acronym stands for Scientific and Technological Research Projects) Years ago they were delivered with increasing delays, of “at least two years,” they say in the government, and that they also granted a “ridiculous” amount of money.

Clarion He discussed the first of these points with renowned researchers. They remembered something explained in other lines like these, namely that the importance of the PICT, beyond the delays, was to keep the wheels of scientific funding “turning.” No one disputes that it could be improved. However, due to excessive inflation in recent years (which has reduced what could be a researcher’s $20,000 a year to just $10,000), the PICTs have been delivered in a dysfunctional way – with its setbacks – until two years ago.

Physicist Jorge Aliaga (former dean of the Faculty of Exact Sciences at UBA and former undersecretary for institutional evaluation of the defunct Ministry of Science and Technology) explained that the new position “is a very good value compared to what it was in recent years, but the announcement says that it will not finance high-level science.” Projects that have a concrete outputAlthough he thought it was good to think about hierarchical areas now, he emphasized that this “cannot be the only thing”.

If this diary When I consulted official sources about the future of – to give one example – paleontologists, especially those who from time to time surprise with their discoveries of dinosaur bones buried millions of years ago in the most remote corners of the country, the answer was – in principle – not that there will be lines of funding dedicated to solving this branch of knowledge.

They shared that recently some researchers in the field conducted a consultation on funding and that they eventually “partnered with a mining company.” They made it clear that “there are many people who will adapt and do what they knew how to do” (albeit with different goals, they suggested) or that “they will end up doing something different.”

Aliaga noted that the PICTs were discontinued and in their place a funding line was introduced that already existed and went in a different direction: “Not only have they left out all the basic science – all the physics, chemistry, mathematics, everything that has to do with materials, not to mention the social sciences and humanities – but they also require that a company be involved in every project. That was already there through the (Argentine Technology Fund) FONTAR; not the PICTs, which are from the (Fund for) Scientific and technological research) FONCYT”.

Now let’s look at how much money the government will allocate for how many projects.

Spokesmen for Darío Genoa, Minister of Innovation, Science and Technology, assured this medium of this “Not even the IDB wanted to continue with the PICTs”. The IDB is the Inter-American Development Bank, the same organization that provided these grants and is now under IDB Loan Agreement 5293/OC-AR “Federal Innovation Program.” will provide the new Support for Scientific Research (AIC)..

The game requires much more money than beforebut what many are observing is that unless other lines of financing are launched more or less quickly, this will be the case a lot less people.

The subsidy is managed by the so-called “Agency”, which is formally the R&D&I (Research, Technological Development and Innovation) Agency. Aside from the confusing names between areas, this office (led by Natalia Avendaño) is the one that Hierarchically, it corresponds to the old Ministry of Science and Technology.

The total amount for all beneficiaries is up to $10 million, with a maximum execution period of two years. Up to $200,000 will be allocated per project, of which “the R&D&I agency will contribute up to 80% and the beneficiary, together with the associated company, must finance the remaining 20% ​​of the total amount of the project,” says the official text.

Based on these figures, Aliaga calculated (on average, where each project receives $100,000 and not the maximum possible amount) that the new funding line will have up to 100 beneficiaries. Everything will work “open window” so that “lectures will be evaluated and money will be given until the budget is used up,” he explained.

Unlike those 100, he added, “every PICT call (there used to be three because the projects lasted three years and there was a new call every year) generally funded more than 1,000 scientific projects“.

So far Clarion According to official sources, this is intentional Two more financing lines will soon be launched. Or three, they corrected a while later from the Genoa area. One of them, which will be announced first (perhaps in January), “will be for the knowledge economy.” They did not provide any information about this or the others.

If one is to go by a document published on October 30, which is Annex 1 of the Chief Cabinet Resolution 282/2025 entitled “Strategic guidelines in innovation, science and technology (2025-2027)”You have to understand that at some point there has to be financial attention two great combinations of knowledgewhich the government has now repealed and which is already in second and third place in this plan. It seems risky to set deadlines for the introduction of new subsidies.

As for “items,” the first of these combinations includes artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology and nanotechnology, space and satellite technology, and information and communications technologies.

The second, somewhat confusingly mentioned, appears in some passages in this plan that speak of a “multidisciplinary” approach. They combine “a comprehensive view” with guidelines that “take into account, within their scope, the four major areas of knowledge that structure research in the Argentine scientific system: agricultural, engineering and materials sciences; life and health sciences; exact and natural sciences; and social sciences and humanities”.

The government has not only canceled but also abolished a funding program (the PICT as a whole). a specific line of financingthe PICT 2022, whose beneficiaries have already been selected by a competent jury, and the They waited almost two years for the money to maintain the projects they are committed to carrying out.

Fernando Pitossi, senior researcher at Conicet, head of the Laboratory of Regenerative and Protective Therapies of the Central Nervous System at the Leloir Institute Foundation and a prominent figure in the field of stem cells, is outraged.

He expressed a few ideas that serve to conclude these lines. He compared the withdrawal of the resolution of the “already approved” PICT 2022 to a “de facto” decision, recalling that “the PICTs are the basis of all research areas” and launched: “This is the death certificate of scientific research the vast majority of research groups in the country.”