Science and technology:

Challenges ahead

Prof. Tissa Vitarana M.P. Minister of Science and Technology

Sri Lanka faces many challenges. As a small developing country with a colonial past we have to transform our economy from that of a backward primary producer to become an industrial country that fully adds value to our natural and agricultural resources.

We have to develop our human resources optimally and also to build up the capacity to use them fully and effectively, converting the brain drain situation into a brain gain one. Our products and services must reach and maintain international standards to meet our own needs, and also capture foreign markets in a highly competitive world market situation.

In the context of the emerging global financial and economic crisis and a collapsing market this task becomes more difficult. However, in the process a major impediment, the dogma of neo-liberalism seems to be getting cast aside once and for all, so that the country can build on the foundation that has been laid in the last three years.

Poverty

Sri Lanka has to emerge from poverty (which leads to problems like malnutrition, inadequate housing, lack of clean water and proper sanitation, unemployment and underemployment, poor health and so on) and become a rich developed country as quickly as possible.

Despite the war on separatist terrorism, Sri Lanka has made reasonably good progress and already achieved several of the Millennium Development Goals (which are scheduled for 2015), but we need to do better.

When economic and social development, in the competitive world of today, is technology based, and the poverty gap is a technology gap, it is by generating and using both cutting edge technology and appropriate technology that we can bridge this gap and emerge from poverty.

In the context of the global economic crisis when local SME production has to be considerably increased, especially to reduce imports, the need for both types of technology increases.

Energy Crisis

There is already an energy crisis, and though oil prices have temporarily dropped, they will continue to rise before very long. Nearly half our foreign exchange earnings were going on oil purchases.

We have to find a solution from within the country. In the context of the need to minimise global warming, it is better to resort to renewable sources of energy. While appreciating the support given in the present Budget to electricity generation through mini-hydro projects, I would like to stress the importance of developing our dendro-thermal potential.

The Alternate Energy Division of the Ministry of Science and Technology has established the role of Gliricidia and I am glad that the Cabinet has accepted that it should be the fourth plantation crop. It grows easily with little or no attention in any part of the country on all soils.

There are 1.6 million hectares of bare marginal land and gliricidia if grown on this can generate more than 20 per cent of our grid electricity needs. The unemployed youth whose ranks are bound to swell once the war is over can be settled on this land, and as a trained disciplined force they can be usefully employed.

It is estimated that from an acre over Rs.200, 000 can be earned per year. The gliricidia leaves are an excellent nitrogen fertiliser that can replace imported urea, further reducing our import bill. It is also a good cattle feed, so that it can be used to promote our dairy industry, which should take off with the excellent support that is being given by the President through the Budget to provide milk to poor children.

Gliricidia grows well as an undercrop in coconut plantations increasing the coconut yield. The inter-ministerial Bio-fuel Committee has come up with proposals for locally producing ethanol/methanol, bio-diesel and biogas to reduce our dependence on imported fuel and this should be implemented as soon as possible.

The on-going research to find cheaper ways of trapping solar energy, specially using nanotechnology, needs to be adequately supported and speeded up.

Technology for the village

The major challenge is to generate the technology to produce good quality products at the lowest possible price. In view of the emerging world food crisis, agricultural productivity has to be maximised so that Sri Lanka becomes self sufficient in food and the scientists have to play an important role there too.

It is time that we consider seriously the possibility to progressively give up the use of imported synthetic chemical inputs and shift to organic and natural farming, not only from environmental and health considerations, but from an economic angle. By generating fertiliser etc.

locally employment can be generated in the village, transport and storage costs can be cut and our import bill can be reduced. The Vidatha programme of the Ministry of Science and Technology has already mobilised the members of the Vidatha societies to promote gliricidia cultivation and also to promote organic farming.

The Vidatha programme also provides the channel to take technology to the village entrepreneur to add value to the agricultural produce. There are 237 computerised Vidatha Centres, one in each Division, in all parts of the country with a science graduate, a computer operator (with 5 computers) and a field worker. In the last three years 3,347 new entrepreneurs, as well as over 3,000 old ones, have benefited from technology developed at institutions like ITI, NERD, ACCIMT and the universities, entrepreneur training from IDB, easy credit from the People’s Bank, quality training from SLSI and marketing guidance.

High-end Technology

As a nation if we are to emerge as an industrialised country then we must become a leader in high-end technology. In the 1960s Sri Lanka’s per capita GDP was $320, while that of Singapore was $395 and South Korea was $80. Today ours is $1,617, Singapore’s $39,130 and South Korea exceeds $20,000. Like in developed countries, the investment in high-end technology in these two countries is large.

As a result in Korea, like in the developed countries, the high-tech value addition to manufactured exports is 33 percent, while that in Sri Lanka is only 1,5 percent. Clearly the challenge before us is to promote High-end Technology, Countries that have emerged from poverty like Korea have done so by catching the periodic waves of high technology that sweep the world and becoming leaders in using that technology to industrialise. Korea used microelectronics, ICT and materials science. Cuba used biotechnology.

I must thank the President and the Treasury for giving the necessary support in the coming Budget for the first phase of the Nanotechnology Initiative, SLINTEC. Hopefully this will enable Sri Lanka to catch this new wave of technology in time so as to benefit our existing industries and also to develop new industries. But we need more support and I hope the offer of support for high-end technology by the World Bank will also materialise.

There is much more we need to achieve. The proportion invested for science and technology remains one of the lowest in the world at 0.13 percent of GDP. We need to progressively increase this to 1 per cent of GDP.

Pakistan spent 1 percent and India targeted 2 percent last year, while Korea spent 3 percent. Even what we are spending is not properly utilised. Sri Lanka has only 21 percent of the R&D personnel in the engineering disciplines (data from NSF, supplied by Prof. S. Fernando).

Though we have 4600 research scientists those actually engaged in research is low. Sri Lanka has only 237.3 researchers per million inhabitants, well below the world average of 894.1, the developed country average of 3272.7, and even the developing country average of 374.3. Research degrees constitute less than 2.5 percent of the total postgraduate output by all Sri Lankan universities.

The non-university research institutes have almost 50 percent of the research facilities in Sri Lanka but that potential for postgraduate research training is hardly tapped.

The proportion of developmental research in Sri Lanka is less than15 percent while in Korea it exceeds 70 percent. There is a poor R&D and innovation culture in the industrial sector. This and the poor commercialisation of research and the poor exploitation of patents need to be addressed.

28 percent of R&D establishments are dedicated to agriculture, followed by 22 percent to social sciences and humanities, and 18 percent to applied sciences. But only 11 percent are directed towards industry-oriented research (three university faculties and five state research institutes).

Therefore we propose setting up a national cadre of researchers with enhanced salaries to which Sri Lankan scientists here and abroad can belong so long as they are active in research in Sri Lanka.

There will be 4 tiers in relation to their research output, and they keep moving up or down according to their performance. This will be combined with a national human resource development strategy to provide postgraduate training opportunities for 500 to 900 postgraduates per year, including opportunities for overseas training.