Posted on behalf of Linda Nordling

Two prominent South African research agencies are facing budget cuts over the next three years, the country’s science minister said on 20 July – while the country’s electric car project is also facing uncertainty.

In a written answer to parliament (doc), Naledi Pandor confirmed that the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) and the National Science Foundation (NRF) will have their budgets trimmed by ZAR187 million (US$24.8m, £16.4m) over three years.

The NRF will be hit hardest, losing ZAR20m in the 2010/11 financial year, ZAR20m in 2011/12 and ZAR80m in 2012/13. The CSIR faces cuts of ZAR35.4m and ZARR31.6m for the 2011/12 and 2012/13 financial years, respectively.

Pandor wrote that the cutbacks were a government-wide response to the economic slowdown caused by the global financial crisis. Both CSIR and NRF have been asked to re-jig their spending plans to “ensure continuity in existing activities”, she added.

Both organizations told Nature that they had been notified of the cuts ahead of the beginning of the current financial year, which started on 1 April. “We were informed of the reduction several months ago and since the economic downturn we have put plans and strategies in place to ensure the CSIR remains financially sustainable,” a spokesman for CSIR said. The NRF, meanwhile, says it had already identified the need to raise funding from new sources. “Because of this the impact of the cuts will be minimal,” a spokesman said.

Meanwhile, it appears that the country’s first locally-developed electric car, the “Joule”, is also to be delayed.

Responsibility for the Joule is being handed from Pandor’s Department of Science and Technology (DST) to the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the minister said in another written answer (doc) published on Tuesday. A ZAR 23 million funding slice from the DST-backed Innovation Fund, approved earlier this year, will be the last from the department, she said.

The reason for the handover is the near-market nature of the project, which does not fit in with the DST’s focus on research, Pandor said. To date, the Innovation Fund has invested ZAR128m in the project.

But the CEO of Optimal Energy, the company developing the car, told a South African newspaper that the project might now stall.

“We are not looking forward to the handing over of the project to [the DTI] – this will no doubt be a long and drawn-out process, delaying the roll-out of critical funds,” Kobus Meiring told Business Day on 21 July.