Budget cuts 'a threat to future of research'

With less financial support for research on a national scale, Thailand’s hope of becoming a self-developed technology creator is getting dim, researchers told The Nation recently.
When Thailand is compared with South Korea, Singapore and Malaysia, it’s clear all those countries had supportive measures and continuous financial support for research promotion plans.  Their development was being driven far more solidly than Thailand’s, they said.
“Our National Research University (NRU) project – with its networking and clustering approach – is designed to recommend crucial fields that Thailand should devote to resources and improvement based on what our findings suggest. The project also aims at strengthening the country’s research efforts, said Assoc Prof Dr Wanchai De-Eknamkul, deputy director of the NRU Project.
“However, the government’s decision to cut the project’s research budget will leave us unable to achieve these goals,” he warned.
All nine national research universities have worked together on mapping and managing direction for the project.
They have focused on conducting research in line with the country’s needs, using top-down and bottom-up balances, not only the traditional bottom-up as before. Top-down approach means the universities have arranged important fields for researchers to work on, while bottom-up means individual researchers have submitted research proposals for grants separately based on their own interests, Wanchai said.
The project has six targeted clusters, including health, food and agriculture, industry (materials, science), energy, environment, and social science. “At first, we aimed at figuring out which clusters should be strongly emphasised and pushed forward. We wanted to guide improvement of the country’s competitiveness and technology creation properly. But now we find we won’t be able to reach that goal as the government has cut down the budget for the NRU project.”
The project was initiated by the Democrat Party-led government with an approved budget of Bt5 billion for the nine universities from 2011-2013.
It approved Bt2 billion for 2011, another Bt2 billion for 2012 and Bt1 billion for 2013.
However, the actual allocation was Bt2 billion for 2011, Bt830 million for 2012 and Bt500 million for 2013.
“The universities planned their research projects according to the approved budget. Normally, each research project takes three to five years to complete. So, when the allocation was cut by almost half of the approved budget, some universities had to drop research projects,” Wanchai added.
As a member of the team that assesses the universities’ research projects annually, he said with lower financial support to the universities, the team had to lessen research output expectations.
“Unlike Thailand, the three countries have clear research plans and they have provided budget allocations according to the plans,” he said.
Elsevier, a global provider of science and health information said an R&D survey of 2010 – based on information from Battelle research and development organisation, R&D Magazine, OECD, IMF and CIA – showed that Thailand invests around 0.2 per cent of gross domestic product in research, Malaysia nearly 1 per cent, Singapore more than 2 per cent and South Korea 3 per cent.
According to the National Research Council of Thailand, the annual research budget had been cut to 0.18 per cent of GDP for this year and next. The research budget allocated by the government amounts to Bt9.7 billion of the total annual budget allocation of Bt2 trillion for fiscal 2013. The private sector’s research budget was put at Bt10 billion. Together the two budgets total Bt19.7 billion, which is about 0.18 per cent of GDP.
“Thai governments have paid most attention to applied research that can be applied to commercial purposes. But to become a knowledge or technology creator, we need basic research as well. South Korea and Malaysia have recognised the importance of basic research. Malaysia has its Fundamental Research Grant Scheme with a RM300 million (Bt3 billion) budget while South Korea has provided around 1 trillion KRW (Bt27.7 billion) to promote basic research,” Wanchai said.
Based on practices in those countries, he urged the Thai government to seriously create a long-term research promotion plan with full support to carry out different types of research. “Change of government must not affect the plan and allocation,” he said.
Presidents of some research universities also voiced concerns over research budget cuts.
Khon Kaen University president Assoc Prof Kittichai Triratanasirichai lamented some projects had to be halted due to less budget, even though the research was crucial for national improvement.
“Thailand doesn’t have real research universities, which are given sufficient budget and focus more on producing postgraduate students. In fact, the universities have been given such a low budget they now cannot reduce their number of undergraduates. Fewer students means fewer tuition fees so they won’t have enough money to operate.”
Chulalongkorn University president Prof Pirom Kamolratanakul said the decrease in the NRU’s project budget had affected long-term research.
“Please do not cut down the budget anymore, otherwise our nation won’t be able to compete with others, ” he said.
Chiang Mai University president Pongsak Angkasith said: “Budget is important for researchers to continuously work to gain knowledge and innovate, otherwise they may move to other developed countries that consider research crucial.” He said he wanted the government to have a clear policy of research support and continue this support every year.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said at a recent seminar the government promised to support researchers and research projects that would help the country increase its competitiveness through the One Research Grant per One University project. The government wanted researchers to choose topics based on private sector needs so research results would be applied to benefit the entire country.

Big funds in Seoul

South Korea has allocated more than 3 trillion won (Bt83 billion) to basic research, university education capacity enhancement, fundamental technology, big sciences, academic research capacity enhancement, nuclear energy, international cooperation in science and technology and other fields.
Its Brain Korea 21 campaign supports graduate students, post-doctoral researchers and professors from 2006-12 with a budget of 1.23 billion won.
Its World Class University project from 2008-12 enhances research competencies and recruits excellent foreign researchers with a 726-million won budget.

Singapore targets growth areas
Singapore’s research and development (R&D) investment is used to drive foreign investment and also improve socio-economic conditions. It has identified environmental and water technologies, plus interactive and digital media as two new growth areas for the city-state.
Other key areas of interest for R&D are public transport, public housing, healthcare and energy efficiency. The government spent US$6.3 billion (Bt197 billion) on R&D last year.

KL focuses on excellence, basic R&D
Malaysia’s Higher Education Ministry has set out a full slate of initiatives for 2011-12. They include research universities and Apex University, establishing higher institutional centres of excellence, championing fundamental research through the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme, and promoting and propagating research-based innovations and commercialisation.
Malaysia’s R&D budget goes to support projects such as the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme with 300 million ringgit (Bt3 billion), Exploratory, Long-Term and Prototype Research Grant schemes with 300 million ringgit, Research Incentive with 41 million ringgit and KPT Special Project with 100 million ringgit.