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CAPA

 

Our accounts, our point of view


We entered 2000, the year in which we had clear financial relief. This was due to a substantial increase in ICMS collection. It was also the year in which a strike occurred, followed by an important salary increase.

The strike lasted 52 days and also taught us some lessons. One of them is that we must have, very clearly, an explicit balance between costs and salaries and that it is necessary to have a transparent and intelligible budget. I must say that I resent the fact that few colleagues understand Unicamp's budget and I would like to point out that it is not difficult to achieve this understanding.

Still in 2000, thanks to the financial slack that occurred, it was possible to start the Institutional Strategic Plan (PEI), budgeted at R$ 30,5 million in the first phase, and we were able to reserve R$ 21,5 million for actions already prioritized. The PEI represents a significant advance in the way the university is managed. In addition to the democratic aspect of determining UNICAMP's planning involving, among others, its 23 directors (who in turn exercise internal democracy within their units), the PEI constitutes an embryo of multi-annual planning, to be practiced in the near future. , and which must necessarily include a budget preview.

There was also, in 2000, an agreement with IPESP, which made it possible to pay around R$20 million in late contributions. This agreement allowed a certain improvement in the face of our impasses with this pension institute.

During that same year, the agreement was consolidated with the State Department of Health for the management of the Sumaré State Hospital. I think this is a way for us to continue providing an important social service to the community in the Campinas region, while at the same time taking great care to ensure that such service provision does not contaminate our budget. This work at the Sumaré State Hospital is underway and I am very pleased to say that it is going very well.

In the year 2001, which was not as brilliant as the year 2000, we tried at all costs to reach a situation of balance. This balanced situation brings us to the problem I already mentioned, the difficulties with fixed expenses and variable income. I have insisted on this, especially with the Budget and Patrimony Commission (COP), which today is an expanded commission, made up of a larger number of CONSU members, that we should think about something like the constitution of a “savings”. I think this is essential so that we have compensation for the imbalances that the ICMS goes through.

Also during 2001, the program called “CT-Infra” took place, which stems from an MCT sectoral fund managed by FINEP, in which we obtained the approval of R$ 3,75 million. Also in 2001, the implementation of the Career, Wages and Salary Plan (PCVS) for employees began and we consolidated the activities of the Unicamp Professional Training Agency (AFPU).

I would like to reflect on some points. The first one concerns the costing problem: although with difficulty, we are managing to contain the costing at approximately constant values. In Table 1 we show the cost and capital expenses between 1997 and 2002, in nominal values ​​and in real values ​​(corrected by the IGP), with the 2002 data being a forecast that may not come true. We can see that there was a sharp drop in funding in 1999, a year in which we had very serious difficulties. The amounts for 2000 and 2001 do not include payments made to IPESP and which appear in our budget as operating costs, as well as the amount reserved for the Institutional Strategic Plan (PEI).

Still in 2001, seeking balance, we finally managed to reach a policy that we had been pursuing for some time. This translated into savings (a) in electrical energy, through purchasing it at a higher voltage; (b) in water, continuing the well drilling policy and negotiating a pending problem with SANASA; and (c) taking care to spend better on foodstuffs for our restaurants.

We draw attention to a problem that the University will face for many years, which is that of court sentences. There is a permanent flow of legal issues at the University, which take effect around five to seven years after they are triggered and which lead to very difficult situations. You can follow, in Table 2, the expenses, in nominal and real values, with judicial sentences in the period from 1997 to 2002 and which constitute a portion of the expenditure on costs and capital presented in Table 1. This corresponds to court orders, on the which there are no further appeals. We can observe that in the years 2000 and 2002 there were very high peaks in relation to court rulings, which lead us to obvious budgetary difficulties. This is a problem that needs to be resolved.

Labor issues require careful treatment and this has been carried out very rigorously by the DGRH and the Occupational Safety and Medicine sector. Resolving these issues will involve expenses that will last for a few years. However, I think that these expenses are unpostponable and untouchable, as the priority nature of improving working conditions is obvious in relation to expenses with long and repetitive legal proceedings. I think this should deserve a lot of attention from those who will continue to run Unicamp.

I would like to emphasize certain situations, making some recommendations, even though many of them are absolutely clear to many. The first is in relation to new courses; I think that the courses we opened more recently at Unicamp should deserve special attention, because they are being implemented alongside old courses, of very good quality. Therefore, the zeal for implementing new courses has to be very great so that they are not born inferior.

One sector that seems to me to be growing is extension; There, progress is needed and we need to be more aware of our social responsibilities. I want to believe that our responsibilities are not just with the people who enter here as students through our selection processes, but with society as a whole, and extension is the privileged locus where we can do this.

In the hospital area, I want to believe that sincere efforts must be made towards gradual autonomy.
As final words, I would also like to mention the financial recovery that occurred in this four-year period, and how it was reflected in payrolls.

In Table 3, we can follow the four years that go from 1994 to 1997 in which there was an increasing commitment to the payroll in relation to State Treasury Resources and which culminated in a commitment situation of 95,6% in 1998 , the largest in our entire history. Over the four years between 1998 and 2001, it was possible to reduce this commitment. I think that, with all the imponderabilities that exist over the next twelve months, the commitment of 87% of the payroll for the year 2002 corresponds to a situation that is much easier to manage than the one I found in 1998.

I would also like to point out that in 2001, after making corrections using the IPC-FIPE, which is our official salary correction index, we had the highest annual salary of the autonomy era. I would like to draw your attention to the graph in levels, which is drawn in a darker color in Graph 1; This shows annual salaries since autonomy. When budgetary autonomy was implemented in 1989, we had an annual salary index that corresponded to 96% of the salary for the month of January 1989. The annual salary declined until 1991, when there was a small recovery for a few years and a new drop in 1994; From then on there was a salary recovery policy, which has been reasonably followed by Unicamp, and in 2001 we practically reached the annual salary level of 1989, with a small advantage.

From the point of view of our core activities, I believe that we are in an enviable academic position, which is demonstrated by the undergraduate evaluation grades, our performance in Postgraduate Studies, evaluated by CAPES, the number of theses completed, the number of publications that we record each year, and it is clear that we have the structure and human resources to maintain this performance and even improve it. Table 4 shows physical indicators of Unicamp's evolution between 1997 and 2001. I do not intend to discuss them at this moment, however, it is clear that our University:

a) displays increasing values ​​of indicators that mean better and greater quantities of services provided to society;

b) should be seriously concerned about the reduction in qualified professional staff, whose replacement is hampered by a retirement system that presents serious structural problems. Facing and resolving such problems can no longer be postponed and is the responsibility of the State.

As for secondary activities, I have no doubt that there need to be efficiency gains, gains that have already started to occur through investments that have been made and that have allowed us to save money in relation to water and electricity, for example. It is also necessary to deepen the computerization process. Significant computerization was carried out at the DGRH, and similar initiatives are already being carried out at the General Secretariat and the DGA. We have to deepen this trend, to have a more manageable institution, in a more modern way and in accordance with what is expected from a university of Unicamp's importance. We are also working on setting up an internal audit system and investing in the construction of a water and sewage treatment plant that will allow for some savings in the near future.

As for human resources problems, they are fundamental in a university institution. They cannot be careless for even a moment, and must be continually improving, with merit and performance taking precedence. With these concerns in mind, (a) we are starting to implement a new career for technical and administrative employees and (b) we are creating the AFPU – Unicamp Professional Training Agency, with already visible results and strong growth potential . It cannot be emphasized enough the complete attention that our Occupational Safety and Health issues must deserve.

I would like to say that I have a very clear conscience, as I hand over Unicamp to my successor in a much better situation than I received it, both from an academic and administrative point of view. These are the general explanations about the budget that I intend to be made official by the University Management.

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