NSI: The Total Amount of Expenditure on Research and Development Activity Increased by 8.9%

In 2018, the total amount of expenditure on research and development activity (R&D) was 827.6 million BGN, which was 8.9% more than the previous year. R&D intensity (R&D expenditure as % of GDP) also increased in comparison with the previous year - from 0.74% in 2017 to 0.75% in 2018, NSI stated in a press release.

The increase in total R&D expenditure in 2018 compared to the previous year was mostly due to the business enterprise sector where R&D expenditure increased by 60.7 million BGN or by 11.4%. Business enterprise sector was the largest of the four institutional sectors of R&D performance with a share of 71.9% of the total R&D expenditure. It was followed by the government sector, which research institutes and organizations formed 22.1% of the total R&D expenditure. The spending on R&D by tertiary schools and university hospitals amounted to 5.4% and respectively by the nonprofit organizations - 0.6% of total R&D expenditure.

The R&D activity was financed from the state budget, businesses, other national sources and from abroad. In 2018, the largest was the share of R&D funds coming from the business enterprise sector - 43.0%. They increased by 8.4% compared to the previous 2017 (from 328.5 million BGN to 356.1 million BGN). Compared to 2017, the funds from foreign sources for R&D increased by 12.1% (from 244.7 million BGN to 274.3 million BGN).

In the structure of R&D expenditure by fields of science in 2018, as in the previous year, the highest share belonged to the R&D expenditure in technical sciences - 57.6% or 476.9 million BGN, followed by medical and health sciences with a share of 17.4% (144.0 million BGN) and the natural sciences - 14.1% (116.4 million BGN).

The full report ca be found here.

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