R&D spending in the Czech Republic remains below the EU average of around 2.3% of GDP. Credit: Freepik.
Prague, Oct 26 (CTK) – In 2022, research and development (R&D) spending in the Czech Republic rose by 9.3% year-on-year to a record CZK 133.3 billion, according to the Czech Statistical Office (CSU). The increase was mainly due to R&D investment by businesses, which reached CZK 85.6 billion, 11.8% more than in 2021.
However, the share of R&D spending relative to gross domestic product (GDP) fell to 1.96%, from 2% in 2021. It remains below the EU average, which has hovered around 2.3% of GDP in recent years, the office said.
Martin Mana, director of the CSU’s Society Development Statistics Department, said the Czech Republic was also lagging significantly behind neighbouring Germany and Austria, which have spent more than 3% of GDP on R&D since 2017.
In absolute terms, R&D spending in the Czech Republic in 2022 was CZK 11.4 billion higher than in 2021. This is a similar increase as in 2017 and 2018, according to the statisticians, but accompanied with significantly higher inflation. In constant prices, spending remained roughly at the 2021 level. At the end of last year, 123,000 people were working in R&D, an increase of 15,000 over the past five years.
Companies were the biggest contributors to the increase in spending. Their R&D investment rose by CZK 7.4 billion year-on-year to a record CZK 85.6 billion, 91% of which came from their own or other corporate sources, the rest from public sources.
Spending in the university and government sectors increased by 5%, an increase of around CZK 1 billion in each sector.
Public domestic sources accounted for 30% of development funding. Last year, CZK 40.4 billion from public budgets went towards this, CZK 1 billion more than the year before. “While this was a record amount, the rate of growth slowed considerably compared to the significant increase in state funding for this activity between 2017 and 2019,” the statisticians said.
According to Marek Stampach from the CSU’s Society Development Statistics Department, CZK 9.5 billion was invested into research and development last year from foreign public resources, which mainly consisted of EU money. This was the highest amount since 2015, when foreign public support reached CZK 13.8 billion.
