In 2019, 8,741 million euros was donated by Spanish companies to R&D activities. This is 0.7% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and leaves it far behind a large portion of its European partners. This is compared to France, where it was 1.4% and Germany, 2.15 % of the annual national wealth.
At State level, Spain expended 1.25% of its GDP on R&D activities. This compares to 2.2% for the European average.
This is a result of a Fedea Observatory report that was presented a few days back. It is based upon data from the INE R&D and Innovation Surveys, which were published at the end 2020. This means that the information didn’t take into consideration the effects of the covid 19 epidemic. Its authors note that these figures confirm that Spanish business R&D does not accept international comparisons.
However, this study also confirms that the slow pace of recovery for the R&D indicators and innovation indicators, which began in 2015, is not yet complete. This is because spending has only increased by 4.2% in the past year. Comparing to 2018, this is almost two percentage points less than the previous two years.
The report also shows that in Spain, the distribution of R&D spending among the public and private sector is not the same as in advanced countries. Internationally, a third of R&D spending is done by the Administrations while the rest is handled by companies. The cost of public centres in Spain still weighs heavily, with 43.6% contributing to this item, compared to 56.4% by companies.
This means that Spanish companies have a large deficit in R&D spending. While 62% of Spanish researchers work in public research centers, only 17% of them are in South Korea and 25% in Japan. In 2019, just over 11,000 Spanish companies were able to execute R&D plans. The majority of them (just over 10,000) were SMEs with less than 250 employees.
Nearly 8,500 companies also stated that R&D plans were in place within their organization on an ongoing basis. The most important are the industry with nearly 4,000 businesses and the services sector with over 4,500.
Fedea’s report points out that Spain’s innovative companies have always had a lower percentage than its European counterparts. The 2014 Eurostat Community Innovation Survey, (CIS) revealed that the German percentage of innovative businesses was twice as high as Spain’s. It was also one-and-a-half times higher than France’s and 30% more than Italy’s.
The 2019 analysis also highlights that Madrid, Catalonia and Andalusia continue to be the mainstay of Spanish R&D. These territories account for 53% and 58% respectively of Spain’s GDP.
The authors of the report note that while it is not yet clear what the economic impact of this pandemic on investment in R&D will be, they point out that there are both positive and negative consequences for Spain. Fedea maintains that this last area is where the Spanish society has been more aware of deindustrialization as well as the importance of creating assets in science and technology.
They believe it would be beneficial for both the Administrations as well as the companies to show a greater social awareness towards research. They are also concerned about the negative effects of GDP falls on investments, collaboration, and talent attraction.