Inpe has budget for 2021 zeroed by the Brazilian Space Agency

In a unilateral decision, the Brazilian Space Agency decided to cut to zero the research, development and human capital budget of Inpe (National Institute of Space Sciences) for 2021.
The information was initially published by the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo.
The report had access to the spreadsheet that provides for the budget allocation that should be included in ploa 2021 (Annual Budget Bill), which will be submitted to the National Congress on August 31.
Currently, inpe's budget is composed of two aspects, one that comes directly from the MCTI (Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovations) and another that is passed on by the AEB (Brazilian Space Agency), an agency subordinate dweller to the MCTI.
In the LOA (Annual Budget Law) of 2020, Inpe received R$ 118.2 million, in another of a series of annual cuts promoted to keep the federal budget aligned with the spending ceiling, established during the Temer administration, in 2016, through a constitutional amendment.
For 2021, the PLOA forecasts R$ 79.7 million, a cut of about 33%. But it causes special attention to the disuniformity of the cuts. While the allocation coming from mcti, suffered a 14% cut (from R$ 54.6 million in 2020 to R$ 46.9 million in 2021), by AEB the cut was 49% (from R$ 63.6 million in 2020 to R$ 32.7 million in 2021).
In practice, the brutal hack left Inpe with virtually no funding for scientific research. According to two researchers from the institute contacted by the "Folha" report (and who preferred not to identify themselves), the resources linked to the action described in the budget as "Research, technological development and formation of human capital for the space sector were the ones that made possible the conduct of scientific investigations and the development of technological innovations within inpe, by financing the required infrastructure : acquisition of inums, laboratory equipment, access to scientific publications, etc.
In essence, with the cut, the employees are all kept, but they would not be able to work. In 2020, this segment received R$ 4.7 million. This year, in internal meetings, Inpe departments had requested R$ 5.7 million (trying to restore some of the losses of recent years).
They finished with zero.