Research spending well below EU average

CYPRUS spends less than a quarter of the average EU proportion of GDP on research and development, and even less than Russia and former eastern bloc countries, statistics revealed yesterday.

And from any money that is given to research on the island, 70 per cent goes on the labour costs of the research.

The Research and Development (R&D) report, issued yesterday by the Statistics Department, said Cyprus spent only £10.8 million, or 0.28 per cent of GDP, in 1998, compared to 2.78 per cent of GDP in Finland and 3.82 per cent in Sweden.

Greece spends 0.48 per cent of GDP and Portugal 0.65 per cent. The EU average is 1.9 per cent.

Russia spends 0.94 per cent of its GDP on R&D, Poland 0.72 per cent, Romania 0.58 per cent and Hungary 0.74 per cent.

“Compared to other countries, the share of GDP of Cyprus devoted to R&D appears to be quite low,” the department said.

Of the £10.8 million used in Cyprus for R&D, 56 per cent was spent by the government, 25 per cent by higher education institutions, 14 per cent by private companies and five per cent by non-governmental organisations.

Of the R&D carried out on the island, the lion’s share, £3.7 million, went on the agricultural sector, £3.2 on natural sciences, £1.5 million on social sciences, £1.2 million on humanities and only 0.4 million on medical research.

Of the expenditure devoted to the Agriculture Ministry, £309,000 went to Fisheries research, £171,000 to geological research and £227,000 to veterinary research, but only £50,000 went to water development research, despite the ongoing drought.

In the health sector, while the state laboratory received £637,000 in research grants, half of which went on wages, the mental health services received only £16,000, of which £13,000 went on wages, and the general health services got £9,000, all of which went on wages. Education research totalled £293,000, of which £251,000 went on wages.