Note on naming: this guide covers Paraguay’s Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) and its PROCIENCIA research-funding program. It is a distinct national institution from the body that, until 2023, was also called CONACYT in Mexico — Mexico’s council was restructured and renamed SECIHTI (Secretaría de Ciencia, Humanidades, Tecnología e Innovación) that year. If you are looking for the Mexican agency, see CASRAI’s guide to SECIHTI (formerly CONACYT/CONAHCYT): Mexico’s restructured science ministry. The two organizations share an acronym by historical coincidence — several Spanish-speaking countries independently named their science councils “Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología” — but have no institutional relationship to one another.
What is Paraguay’s CONACYT?
Paraguay’s Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (CONACYT) is the country’s governing body for science, technology, innovation, and quality policy. It was created on January 31, 1997 by Law No. 1028, and is a public institution of “mixed” composition attached to the Presidency of the Republic rather than to a line ministry — it functions with administrative and financial autonomy, but its governing council draws representatives from across government and academia rather than from a single ministry. Council membership includes the Technical Planning Secretariat of the Presidency, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Public Health, the Scientific Society of Paraguay, public and private universities, and industry and business associations.
CONACYT’s mandate spans formulating and coordinating national science, technology, and innovation policy; administering Paraguay’s national research-quality and standards infrastructure; and — the function most relevant to research administrators — channeling the country’s principal public funding for scientific research and researcher development, primarily through the PROCIENCIA program described below. CONACYT itself describes PROCIENCIA as the main mechanism through which it finances research and human-capital development in Paraguay (CONACYT, “Prociencia”).
PROCIENCIA: Paraguay’s flagship research and innovation program
PROCIENCIA (Programa Paraguayo para el Desarrollo de la Ciencia y Tecnología) is CONACYT’s principal funding instrument. The program was approved by the governing council of Paraguay’s Fund for Excellence in Education and Research (FEEI) in 2014, with implementation and the first competitive calls following shortly after; its first phase ran for approximately seven years, concluding in June 2022 (FEEI, “PROCIENCIA II”). PROCIENCIA is explicitly aligned with Paraguay’s National Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, and CONACYT positions it as the vehicle for delivering benefits under that policy to individual researchers and research-support staff as well as to institutions: higher-education institutions, other educational establishments, research centers, scientific laboratories, and governmental and non-governmental organizations are all eligible participants, alongside individual researchers and research managers.
PROCIENCIA II (2021–2030)
A second phase, PROCIENCIA II, was approved on June 23, 2021 and is structured to run through June 30, 2030 — a nine-year (108-month) program designed, per FEEI’s own description, to build on lessons learned during the first phase. FEEI’s published program description groups PROCIENCIA II funding into five components: research promotion (project and strategic-project funding plus support for scientific events); human-capital development (graduate scholarships and research stays); the national researcher-incentive system (see PRONII, below); public science engagement and outreach; and general program administration. FEEI’s own figures for the program describe an allocation of over ₲600 billion (Paraguayan guaraníes) directed toward 355 research projects and strategic initiatives, alongside 255 scholarships, 283 funded research stays, and 851 categorized researchers under the incentive system — figures reported by FEEI as of its own publication and not independently re-verified here; a research administrator relying on a current total should confirm against FEEI’s or CONACYT’s live figures before citing them in a proposal or report, since multi-year program totals of this kind are routinely updated as new funding cycles are approved.
How PROCIENCIA is funded: FEEI and FONACIDE
PROCIENCIA does not draw on CONACYT’s own general operating budget — it is financed through Paraguay’s Fund for Excellence in Education and Research (Fondo para la Excelencia de la Educación y la Investigación, FEEI), a fiduciary fund created by law specifically to channel a share of Paraguay’s binational hydroelectric royalty revenue (from the Itaipú and Yacyretá treaties) into education and research spending via the broader National Fund for Public Investment and Development (Fondo Nacional de Inversión Pública y Desarrollo, FONACIDE). In practice this means PROCIENCIA’s funding cycle is tied to Paraguay’s annual FEEI/FONACIDE budget allocation process rather than to a CONACYT-set line item, which is a structurally different funding path than, for example, a ministry-budget-funded research council — worth noting for any administrator building a multi-year funding forecast around Paraguayan grant income.
PRONII: Paraguay’s national researcher-classification system
Alongside project and scholarship funding, PROCIENCIA administers PRONII (Programa Nacional de Incentivo a los Investigadores), Paraguay’s national system for categorizing and financially incentivizing active researchers. PRONII functions similarly in concept to other Latin American national researcher-registry systems — Mexico’s Sistema Nacional de Investigadoras e Investigadores (SNII, formerly SNI; see CASRAI’s SNII/SNI guide) is the most directly comparable model — in that researchers apply for evaluation and, if categorized, receive a recurring incentive payment and formal recognition tied to their category level. It also includes repatriation incentives intended to attract Paraguayan researchers working abroad back into the national system.
Funding lines and application modalities
Based on CONACYT’s and FEEI’s published call structures, PROCIENCIA funding is organized into several recurring lines that a research administrator working with Paraguayan collaborators or applicants should expect to encounter:
- Research and development (R+D) project grants — competitive calls funding defined research projects, typically routed through an eligible Paraguayan institution rather than paid directly to an individual.
- Research stays and scholarships abroad (“becas en el exterior”) — for researchers or researchers-in-training affiliated with a Paraguayan institution who will carry out research activities outside Paraguay.
- Research stays and scholarships within Paraguay (“becas en la República del Paraguay”) — the inbound counterpart, for individuals based abroad who will carry out research activities at an institution located in Paraguay.
- Graduate-program incentives — support for researcher training within national postgraduate programs, and for the creation and strengthening of excellence-track master’s and doctoral programs.
- PRONII categorization — the ongoing researcher-incentive line described above, evaluated on its own periodic cycle rather than as a single-round grant call.
- Strategic and scientific-event funding — support for larger strategic research initiatives and for organizing or attending scientific events.
Current, open calls are published directly by CONACYT (conacyt.gov.py/prociencia) and by FEEI (feei.gov.py/prociencia-2-convocatorias); because call windows, eligibility annexes, and budget ceilings change between cycles, always confirm the current call text on one of those two sites rather than relying on a prior year’s requirements.
Why this matters for research administrators outside Paraguay
For institutions collaborating with Paraguayan universities or research centers, or advising a researcher applying to a Paraguayan-institution-routed PROCIENCIA call, the practical implications are: (1) funding is channeled through an eligible national institution, not paid directly to an unaffiliated individual, so a formal institutional affiliation in Paraguay is generally a prerequisite; (2) PROCIENCIA’s funding source (FEEI/FONACIDE) is a separate legal and budgetary mechanism from CONACYT’s own institutional budget, which affects how multi-year award continuity should be assessed; and (3) because “CONACYT” is not a unique identifier internationally, any due-diligence or funder-verification process should confirm the country context explicitly — Paraguay’s CONACYT (conacyt.gov.py), not Mexico’s former CONACYT (now SECIHTI, secihti.mx) or any other national council using the same acronym.
Frequently asked questions
Is Paraguay’s CONACYT the same organization as Mexico’s CONACYT?
No. They are separate national institutions in separate countries that historically used the same Spanish-language name and acronym (Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología). Mexico’s CONACYT was restructured and renamed SECIHTI in 2023; Paraguay’s CONACYT, created in 1997, continues to operate under its original name. See CASRAI’s SECIHTI (Mexico) guide if you were looking for the Mexican agency.
What does PROCIENCIA actually fund?
Research and development project grants, inbound and outbound research-stay scholarships, graduate-program and doctoral/master’s-program strengthening, the PRONII national researcher-incentive system, and support for strategic research initiatives and scientific events — all administered by CONACYT under FEEI/FONACIDE financing.
What is PRONII?
PRONII (Programa Nacional de Incentivo a los Investigadores) is Paraguay’s national system for evaluating and categorizing active researchers, providing recurring financial incentives and formal recognition to those who qualify — conceptually comparable to Mexico’s SNII or similar national researcher-registry systems elsewhere in Latin America.
Can non-Paraguayan researchers receive PROCIENCIA funding?
PROCIENCIA’s scholarship lines explicitly include an inbound modality (“becas en la República del Paraguay”) for researchers based outside Paraguay who will carry out research activities at a Paraguayan institution, alongside an outbound modality for Paraguay-affiliated researchers working abroad. Project-level R+D grants, however, are generally routed through an eligible Paraguayan institution. Always confirm eligibility annexes on the specific open call.
How is PROCIENCIA funded?
Through Paraguay’s Fund for Excellence in Education and Research (FEEI), a fiduciary fund financed via the National Fund for Public Investment and Development (FONACIDE), which channels a share of Paraguay’s binational hydroelectric treaty royalty revenue into education and research spending — not through CONACYT’s own general operating budget.
Related CASRAI resources
For comparable national research-funding structures elsewhere in Latin America, see CASRAI’s guides to ANID Chile and Fondecyt, CONCYTEC Peru, ANII Uruguay, and SENESCYT Ecuador. For the international funding-body landscape more broadly, see the Global Research Council overview. For Mexico’s separately-named, similarly-acronymed agency, see SECIHTI (formerly CONACYT/CONAHCYT).
