R&D expenditure in Romania reaches 3.675 billion lei in 2016

Romania spent 3.675 billion lei for R&D activities in 2016, with total R&D expenditure making up 0.48 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), of which 0.27 percent was made for the private sector and 0.21 percent for the public sector, according to data with the National Institute of Statistics (INS) released on Thursday. 

According to INS, at the end of 2016, there were 44,386 R&D workers, out of which 20,350 were women (45.8 percent of the total). By educational attainment, of the total number of R&D workers at the end of 2016, 37,643 were higher education graduates (84.8 percent of the total) and 6,743 had an educational background other than higher (15.2 percent). In addition, the number of doctoral and postdoctoral graduates was standing at 18,605, out of which 8,921 were women, up by 1,338 from 2015. 

INS data reveal that 72.6 percent of all the R&D workers in 2016 were full-time employees. 

By category of occupations, the largest share of the R&D employees was represented by researchers - 62.6 percent of the total (27,801 employees, up by 548 from 2015) - while technicians and similar workers made up 14.3 percent, or 6,332 employees. 

In 2016, 3.378 billion lei out of the total R&D expenditure in the four performance sectors were current expenditure (91.9 percent) and 296.6 million lei (8.1 percent) were capital expenditures. 

Also, applied research expenditure accounted for 54 percent of total R&D expenditure, up four percentage points from 2015. At the same time, basic research expenditure dropped by 5.1 percentage points as a share of the total R&D expenditure compared with the previous year, from 30 percent to 24.9 percent. Experimental development expenditure increased by 1.1 percentage points, from 20 percent to 21.1 percent. 

By sources of financing of the total R&D expenditure, enterprises represented the highest share, of 47.6 percent, followed by public funds, at 39.6 percent. 

At the same time, within the performance sectors, the higher education units received the highest amounts (74.8 percent), followed by government sector units (73.1 percent). 

Funding sources for foreign-based research and development were mostly geared toward private business sector units (57.5 percent), government sector (29.2 percent) and higher education (12.7 percent). AGERPRES .