Research institutes are calling for more money from the budget

116 research institutes currently operate in Poland and carry out research and development aimed at implementation and practical applications. Like university departments and institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences, they receive subsidies for statutory activity from the state budget.

The data presented by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education show that the amount of the subsidy decreases from year to year. In 2012, the institutes received from the state budget a total of over 654 million zlotys, in 2013 nearly 516 million zlotys, and the subsidy in 2014 amounted to nearly 455 million zlotys.

"There is a need to increase the subsidies for statutory activity of research institutes. Admittedly, revenues of institutes in 2013 amounted to 6.4 billion zlotys, and the 516 million zlotys subsidy accounted for only 8.6 percent revenue. However, it is important pool of money that gives institutes the opportunity to increase revenue through participation in national and international projects" - said the Chairman of the Main Council of the Research Institutes Leszek Rafalski during a meeting of the subcommittee for economics of education and science.

He stressed that research institutes have huge ambitions to make their mark in the EU\'s Horizon 2020. However, preparations to participate in one of the Horizon 2020 projects cost tens of thousands of zlotys. A little less money (several thousand zlotys) need research teams who prepare proposals for national competitions the National Science Centre and the National Centre for Research and Development.

"We are aware that funding from subsidies for statutory activity has decreased considerably over the past two years. Year 2012 is an imperfect reference point, because it was still a year of relative abundance of funds, when it comes to the science budget" - said on Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education Marek Ratajczak. "I am fully aware that even those institutions that have large revenues from sources other than the subsidies, cannot finance everything from these sources. Hence the important role of the subsidy for statutory activity" - emphasised Ratajczak.

He reminded that in 2014 a lower subsidy for research institutes is affected by parametric evaluation of research units, carried out in 2013. Compared with the previous parameterisation, less institutes received the highest category. In 2013, the highest categories A+ and A were awarded to 71 research institutes, and only 43 in 2014. "This translated to the amount of subsidies granted to those entities" - noted Ratajczak.

Chairman of the Main Council of the Research Institutes stressed that his community voiced a number of criticisms of the evaluation criteria of scientific units. In previous criteria, technical sciences lacked scoring for participation in international projects. The Council submitted 10 proposals for changes to these criteria both to the evaluating body (Committee for Evaluation of Research Units) and to the Ministry of Science.

Deputy Minister Ratajczak pointed out that in the assumptions for the budget, which will soon be submitted to the parliament, funds for science are more than 10 percent higher than in 2014. "We assume that part of these funds will also be used for subsidies for statutory activity" - said Ratajczak.

He also reminded that in 2015 the subsidy will be distributed a little differently than before. Money allocated to scientific institutions from the state budget will depend precisely on the quality of research and scientific categories awarded to research units. The so called transferred constant, which is the amount of "transferred" from the previous year, will be abolished. (PAP)

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