State budgets allotted about US$300 million for science and technology in 1991, with the state of São Paulo accounting for 40 percent of spending, and the states of Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, and Bahia accounting for 35 percent. After 1988 most Brazilian states established in their constitutions a fixed percentage of their budgets to be given to the state-level science and technology sector. They followed the example of São Paulo, which provides the FAPESP (São Paulo State Federation to Support Research) with about 1 percent of state tax revenues (this amounted to about US$60 million in 1991). However, São Paulo is the only state where the constitutional rule is followed strictly.
The FAPESP is just one part of a large science, technology, and higher education sector run by the state of São Paulo that includes three public universities and several research institutes. These activities are coordinated by the state Secretariat for Science, Technology, and Economic Development (Secretaria de Ciência, Tecnologia e Desenvolvimento Econômico--SCTDE). However, most of the institutions under the SCTDE--the three universities, the FAPESP, and the IPT (Institute for Technological Research)--are autonomous. The Institute for Nuclear and Energy Research (Instituto de Pesquisas Energéticas e Nucleares--IPEN), located on the USP campus, is also linked formally to the SCTDE but in practice is run by the federal government. The SCTDE also runs the State Foundation for Scientific and Technological Development (Fundo Estadual de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico--Funcet), which provides loans to the private sector, cooperatives, and associations, in collaboration with the São Paulo State Bank (Banco do Estado de São Paulo--Banespa). Funcet has a budget of about US$20 million and a grant program through its Department of Science and Technology (Departamento de Ciência e Tecnologia--DCET) (see table 36, Appendix).
Data as of April 1997