The European Next Generation funds are giving a boost to Spanish innovation, historically very low compared to its European colleagues.
The Cotec foundation, specialized in the analysis of the technological ecosystem in Spain, advanced last Friday data on public and private investment in R&D during 2021. And, according to this entity, the data has grown by around 8%, to touch the 17,000 million euros. It is the highest growth rate recorded since 2008, when the financial crisis had not yet been felt in this sector. Indeed, 8% represents a remarkable growth if one takes into account that in previous years investment barely increased at a rate of 1% or 2% per year.
According to the Cotec foundation, the rise in investment is explained precisely because of the arrival of European funds, which suddenly injected 3,855 million euros into the executed public budget for the year 2021. Adding this figure to the state budget, public investment executed in R&D stood at 7,565 million, an all-time record. It remains to be seen the evolution of investment by companies, which normally accounts for more than half of the money allocated to innovation. The figure will be revealed in the next data from the National Institute of Statistics at the end of November.
Despite having increased significantly in 2021, investment in R&D is still lacking. If it is put in relation to the GDP, it barely reaches 1.4% of the total, far from the 2% objective set in the State Plan for Scientific, Technical and Innovation Research, and also far from the 2.3% average of the countries of the European Union.
The data do not match the economic potential of Spain. Cotec’s 2022 Yearbook, presented on Friday, warns that while GDP per capita in Spain is almost at the EU average, investment in research, development and innovation per inhabitant is 333 euros, compared to 695 in average in the European Union, according to 2020 data. The gap is still far from disappearing.
The chronic investment deficit in R&D is due to the lack of a public-private strategy, the weight of tourism in the Spanish economy and also the difficulties in executing the budget, denounced for years by experts in the sector, who lament the high bureaucracy and slowness in obtaining business aid.
However, the data shows that execution has increased. And that after the covid crisis, the Government has reinforced its commitment to innovation. In the budgets that it has presented for next year, spending on R&D is growing again and will stand at 16,328 million euros, 23% more than in 2022.
