Prague, May 22 (CTK) – Czech science and research will get 36.2 billion crowns in 2018, which is 3.5 billion more than this year, the government decided today approving Deputy PM for Science and Research Pavel Belobradek’s (Christian Democrats, KDU-CSL) proposal, cabinet spokesman Martin Ayrer has tweeted.
The material the government approved also raises a medium-term outlook until 2020.
More money is to go mainly to applied research.
Belobradek said previously the additional money is to reinforce the Science Academy and universities’ budgets.
He said the state will have to be ready for that the country will not have as much money for science and research from European funds after 2024 as it has now.
The EU budget after 2020 counts with a cut of up to 30 percent in spending on research, which equals eight to ten billion crowns, Belobradek said.
The spending from public budgets on science and research could decrease from 1 percent of GDP this year to 0.6 percent after 2023.
The overall spending in the draft state budget for 2018 is 1.25 billion crowns higher than the medium-term outlook for 2018.
Institutional spending is to be about 911 million crowns higher than supposed.
The outlook for 2019 will rise to 37.8 billion crowns and to 39.25 billion for 2020.
The money from the state budget is to mainly support cooperation between scientists and the business environment and so raise the country’s competitiveness.
Belobradek often says science and research cannot only be financed from public sources, but the contribution of the private sector must be raised.
According to the Czech Statistical Office (CSU), the overall spending on research and development has been rising in the past years. It reached 88.7 billion crowns in 2015.
More than a half of the investments into research came from firms, about one third from the state budget and the rest from the European Union.
($1=23.710 crowns)
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