Finland's R&D investment on target, reveal latest statistics
The most recent figures on research and development (R&D) published by Statistics Finland show that in 2005, the country's investment increased by €220 million to a total of nearly €5.5 billion. This represents an annual growth in research expenditure of 4%, almost the same amount as in 2004. Overall, the figures reveal that the share of GDP that the country spends on research remained steady at 3.5%. This places Finland ahead of many of its European counterparts, second only to Sweden, in the race to meet the EU's objective of investing 3% of GDP in research by 2010. According to the latest statistics, the sector that contributed most to the R&D growth was business. Of the €220 million increase, €193 million came from the private sector, while the remaining €25 million was generated from research institutes in the public sector. In a breakdown of spending on R&D by business sector, the electronics industry has the highest growth, with investments increasing by nearly 7% in 2005. R&D expenditure of public research institutes also grew by 4.6%. However, universities' spending remained unchanged, which the report suggests is due to changes in the way in which the budget-funded research expenditure was calculated.
Countries
Finland