The Valencian Community maintains the category of “moderately innovative” region in the Regional Innovation Scoreboard 2023, a ranking issued by the European Commission to analyze the innovative state of the different regions that make up the European Union. The report, which has just been published, places the Valencian Community in 121st place, seven places ahead of its position in 2021.
Then, the European Commission recognized the Valencian Community as the Spanish region that had made the greatest innovative effort, with growth of 18.3%. This year, the figure stands at 10.6% and although it shows a slowdown, it maintains a dominant position with respect to the rest of the Spanish regions and is above the European average, which is 8.5%.
The report shows that the regional differences in performance are high between territories and places the Basque Country as the region with the best performance, more than three times higher than the region with the worst performance, the City of Ceuta. Both the Basque Country and Madrid, Catalonia and the Comunidad Foral de Navarra top the ranking.
The Valencian Community is one of the 10 moderately innovative regions, although it is the only one that comes close to the next group. Since 2017, the record of the effort in innovation has been increasing, going from 1.7% to 7.3% in 2019, 18.3% in 2021 and the latter 10.6% in 2023.
That the region make a greater commitment to innovation and development is one of the mantras repeated by economic gurus. Recently, an Ivie study for the Fundación LAB Mediterráneo warned of the lower investment effort made by the Valencian Community (percentage of investment over GDP), especially in ICT and RD.
The investment effort in these two assets only represents 3.5% of GDP and, although the weight of investment in real estate assets has fallen, the effects of the real estate bubble on capital are still dragging.
