How much does Vietnam spend on agricultural research?
Trillions of dong are spent every year to carry out agricultural research projects and Vietnam has nearly 11,000 scientists in the agricultural sector, but considerable achievements have yet to be recorded.
A report shows that there are 10,895 scientists working in the fields which have direct relations with agriculture technology.
More than one-third of the annual budget allocated to science & technology development is spent on agriculture research.
Over VND1 trillion is disbursed every year through the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) for scientific research and technology transfer projects in agriculture.
Minister of Science and Technology Nguyen Quan said that 10,895 scientists work at the institutes and relevant units under MARD.
Meanwhile, the budget of trillions of dong, according to Quan, is spent not only on scientific research activities, but also on regular expense items and R&D (research and development).
“The amount of money, if divided among 10,000 researchers, or 100 institutes or research centers of MARD, will be a small percentage,” Quan said. “It is just equal to one-tenth of the budgets of our neighboring countries.”
Quan said the total amount of money is not just spent on scientific research. In fact, 90 percent of the budget is spent on regular expense items and investment & development.
“Vietnam spends 2 percent of the state budget every year on science & technology. Of this, 10 percent is spent on research and development activities,” Quan said.
The number of potential scientists for Vietnam’s agriculture is much larger, if counting the other 24,000 PhDs Vietnam has trained so far.
However, reports say only half of the 24,000 PhDs work as scientists.
And of the 12,000 working scientists, only a small percentage of them are capable of conducting scientific research.
Quan, at a recent press conference, reported that there are only 24 percent of Vietnamese PhDs working in technical fields and technology, while the other 76 percent PhDs are in economics, finance, business administration and philosophy.
He said that every dong of the budget has been spent in a reasonable way to hasten the development of technical solutions and technology in agriculture.
There have been successes in the sector, however. In June 2013, Quan said on a TV programme that the program on post-harvesting technology transfer has been successful.
The Japanese Cash technology and Israeli Juran technology have been successfully used for tuna, black tiger shrimp and litchi. One container of Vietnamese litchis preserved with Japanese Cash technology was exported to Japan last summer.
Meanwhile, investors are preparing to set up factories in Phu Yen province which will use high technology to preserve tuna.
