Conicet President Resigns and Universities Demand Additional $ 4 Million

Alejandro Ceccatto announced his resignation as President of the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (Conicet) and explained that it was "for health reasons".

Miguel Laborde, one of the vice-presidents, will fill the position by acting.

Recall that the President of Conicet is appointed by the President of the Nation.

The question is whether Mauricio Macri will leave Laborde until December 10, when a new presidential administration will begin after the national elections.

Laborde is a historical Peronist, but has good relations with the current management. It should therefore continue until the end of Macri's management.

From inside Conicet, they badure that the situation of the organization is critical and that they receive the billions of pesos promised by Lino Barañao, Secretary of Science and Technology of the Nation, in May.

"Conicet has 308 institutes across the country. We must therefore solve at least one daily problem and pay our debts. The last devaluation also affected a lot, "said a member of the board of directors of Conicet.

University claim

Meanwhile, universities are also experiencing a problematic fiscal situation.

The National Interuniversity Council (CIN), which brings together all rectors of public universities in the country, called a few days ago for a strengthening of 4,000 million pesos by the end of 2019.

The strengthening is due to the "economic issues of public notoriety". And he mentions the devaluation and the badociated inflation.

"This has two effects: on the one hand, services paid by universities are expensive and, on the other hand, it reduces the opportunity to buy basic supplies for laboratories, purchased equipment in dollars and end up representing a non-refundable cost for the universities "explained Mario Lozano, CIN Director General.

In addition, the agency approved its draft budget for 2020.

Although this amount is set by the secretary of university policies of the country, this figure is generally quite close to the demand of the rectors.

Based on the expected increase in wages and inflation trends, the total amount requested by the CIN is 248,500 million pesos.

For 2019, the budget of the university rose to nearly 140 billion pesos.