Spending on science increases sharply

Prague, Sept 18 (CTK) - The spending on science rose by one-fifth in a year, having reached more than 70 billion crowns last year, but this is still below the EU average, the Czech Statistical Office (CSU) said yesterday.

Firms spend on science more than the state and drawing of EU subsidies had a major impact on the spending, the CSU said.

Most money is spent on natural science and technical fields, the least on social and agricultural fields, it added.

"Domestic business resources are still the most important source of finances as they make up 46.9 percent of all spending on research and development (33.2 billion crowns). They are followed by public domestic resources (26.2 billion crowns or 37 percent)," the CSU said.

Funds from abroad are playing an increasing role as in 2011 they rose by 44 percent to 10.8 billion, constituting 15.2 percent of all expenditures on science.

As far as foreign resources are concerned, public funds prevailed over private ones for the first time last year.

According to the CSU, this is evidence that the Czech Republic started drawing more EU subsidies.

Although last year's growth in spending on science was the biggest over the past ten years, it still only made up 1.86 percent of GDP, while the EU average was 1.9 percent in 2010.

Out of the public money, 41 percent was spent on natural sciences, 29 percent on technical fields, 12 percent on medicine and 7 percent on arts.

The least proportion, 6 percent, went to social and agricultural sciences, each.

($1=18.719 crowns)