The Engineering Club and the scientific and technological sovereignty of the country.

By Francis Bogossian and Fernando Peregrino The Engineering Club stands in solidarity with President Lula's government's efforts to contain the fiscal deficit and improve tax justice mechanisms—such as the recent reduction in income tax for those at the bottom of the pyramid and the taxation of income at the top. This is a courageous and necessary measure to reduce historical inequalities and restore balance to public accounts without penalizing those who have the least.

But, in the same vein of justice and rationality, it is necessary to turn our attention to preventing another type of deficit: the deficit of technological knowledge and qualified personnel. Federal universities, responsible for forming the scientific and technological base of the country, face a discouraging budgetary situation. Discretionary expenses, for example, which sustain the daily operation of laboratories, university hospitals, and research centers, are at a critical level.

This situation worsened with Constitutional Amendment No. 135, which allows the retention of 30% of the Union's own revenues, known as DRU, directly impacting the patrimonial revenues of universities. The impact is devastating: the oldest and most structured institutions, which have built up a patrimonial base over decades to compensate for budget cuts, now find themselves deprived of this balancing instrument. The government could well apply the same criteria of tax justice used in the examples above and exclude universities from the DRU. This taxation of universities, in addition to compromising university autonomy, discourages innovative management of own revenue generation, penalizing precisely those institutions that have modernized to become more efficient.

It is worth remembering that public universities are responsible for about 95% of the national scientific output. It is in these universities that engineers, researchers, and scientists are trained, supporting the government's reindustrialization efforts with the New Industry Brazil Program, whose success depends on mastering advanced technologies in energy, defense, health, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and ecological transition.

Fiscal austerity is necessary, but scientific and technological sovereignty is essential! Without strong universities, the country loses its capacity to innovate, to compete, and to assert itself as a sovereign nation.

The Engineering Club, true to its tradition of defending national development, trusts that the government will know how to correct this imbalance, preserving the strategic value of public universities and Brazilian science in building a developed, just, and independent Brazil.