Latin America falls behind in technology

Contrary to the conventional wisdom in Washington and European capitals, the biggest threat to Latin America may not be the proliferation of radical populist strongmen but the region's declining levels of technological education, research and development.
Judging from a new report by the Inter-American Development Bank, the region is falling behind the rest of the world in almost every category of education and technological skills. In other words, while the rest of the world moves toward the knowledge economy -- in which a software patent is worth millions of tons of raw materials -- and high value-added exports, most Latin American countries remain stuck in their reliance on exports of oil, soybeans and other primary products.
The report, Education, Science and Technology in Latin America and the Caribbean, includes some alarming data, which have received little or no attention in the region. Among them:
The 32 Latin American and Caribbean countries together spend $11 billion a year in research and development of new products. That is less than the $12 billion spent for this endeavor by one single Asian country, South Korea.
Brazil, the Latin American leader in research and development, spends about 1 percent of its gross domestic product in R & amp;D. By comparison, China, which has comparable or worse poverty rates than many Latin American countries, spends 1.4 percent of its GDP in research and development.
While the business sector share of research and development is growing dramatically in China and other Asian countries, it is falling in Latin America, where most R & amp;D is paid for by the state. While in communist China the business sector pays for 61 percent of that country's R & amp;D, in Latin America the percentage is only 32 percent, one of the world's lowest.
Many Latin American countries haven't even entered the research and development arena. Seventy percent of the region's R & amp;D is done by just three countries: Brazil (42 percent), Argentina (20 percent) and Mexico (11 percent).
While Latin American countries are making progress in increasing the average years of schooling, the region is falling behind in raising educational standards, which is the primary focus of education in industrialized countries. Recent results of the international PISA mathematics test show that while students in Mexico got an average score of 385, Japanese students scored 534 and U.S. students 483.
While Japan registered nearly 36,000 patents in the United States a year, South Korea about 3,000 and China 300, Brazil registers about 130 patents, Mexico 84 and Argentina 62.
Why should these figures sound alarm bells? Because, despite record oil and other commodity prices, the countries that excel in the knowledge economy produce more higher-paying jobs than those that don't.
Just as an example, U.S. Department of Agriculture figures show that corn producers get only 4 percent of the retail price of a box of corn flakes. The rest goes to genetic engineering, processing, packaging, branding, marketing and advertising, among other things.
"The purpose of the report was to raise awareness," says Jan E. Boyer, a U.S. representative at the Inter-American Development Bank. "There is not enough focus on this either at the regional, national or local level. This is an area where there could be much more collaboration within the Americas."
True enough. If you look at the top issues on the political agenda of most Latin American countries, science and technology is rarely talked about. When Mexico's presidential candidates held their first televised debate for the July 2 election last week, they discussed five issues, including energy and the environment, but failed to address education, science and technology.
My conclusion: It's OK to be concerned about radical populism. But radical populist strongmen will come and go, as has happened in many countries in the past. But the investments that countries are failing to make -- or draw from the private sector -- in education, research and development may haunt them for decades to come.
Andres Oppenheimer is a Latin America correspondent for the Miami Herald. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.