$41 billions spent in tech development and research. Brazil News

Yoopy! Lets celebrate IT investments made on the last 4 years in Brazil had generated exciting results for us, the scientific community.

The results presented on the PACTI 2010 are astonishing!

PACTI stands for "Plan of Action on Science, Technology and Innovation" and it is a scientific document that orients governmental expenses on technology and science. It is responsible for RS$41 billions (around US$25 billion) spent in 4 years time (since 2007) and the outcomes are great and refreshing for the whole Brazilian society.

For example:
Biotechnology results:

• 69 new medicaments developed for pharmaceutical purposes of which some are offered for free to the population. Mainly for tuberculosis, malaria, leishmaniasis, schistosomiasis, Chagas disease (project known as BIOINOVA).
• 49 projects were created to execute basic research on cellular therapy
• Innovation of manufacturing processes of biotechnology products (Rotas Biotecnológicas project);

Nanotechnology results:

• Construction of 6 labs for research (among them are CETENE, CBPF, LRNano and C2Nano)
• Financial and technical support to 175 basic research projects in 2009
• 376 scientists were trained and capacitate

Information Technology and Communication:

• RS$324 million spent on the CEITEC centre

Public Health outcomes:

• RS$819 millions spent on IT services for public hospitals and on statistical systems

More subjects helped by PACTI's development strategies:

• Biofuel
• Research on equipments for public energy distribution
• Transfer of technology to make family agro-businesses more competitive against big agro-companies
• Investment on "SpeciesLink", a biodiversity program for maintenance of rare or endanger ecosystems
• RS$140 millions spend on Antarctic research
• Climate change
• The Amazon conservation
• Improvement of the Spacial and Nuclear Energy programs
• ... and much more.

For the full report, please read the published PDF. (In Portuguese)