Slovakia: support to education, R&D and innovation will increase in 2010

The Slovak Parliament has approved the 2010 state budget. Support to R&D has increased from EUR 144.37 million in 2008 to EUR 295.55 million in 2009 and EUR 295.55 million in 2010.It should be noted that these increases originated in transfers from the Structural Funds (Operation Programme Research and Development, OPRD). The transfer accounted for 70.8 percent of total expenditure by the state budget in 2010. National support to R&D actually decreased by 5.3 percent in 2010 compared to 2009. The decrease related to the termination of most state R&D programmes, and cuts in the budget of the Research and Development Agency (RDA). The R&D-related expenditure generated about 2.44 percent of the overall government budget in 2009 and 2.47 percent in 2010.

The estimated share of public R&D expenditure in gross domestic product (GDP) may rise from 0.46 percent in 2009 to 0.60 percent in 2010, depending on developments in the budget income, revenue, and GDP, and ability of government agencies to tap into the Structural Funds.

The State Budget Law also lists specific targets related to particular expenditure items. The OPRD finance, for example, should 'support excellent collaborative projects by Slovak and foreign partners, create high quality environment for R&D activities via purchases of R&D technologies and provide for long-term support to excellent research projects in period 2008-2015'. As for excellent collaborative projects, numbers of researchers supported should increase from 680 in 2010 to 1700 in 2014. Numbers of research institutions with improved infrastructure should increase from 8 to 20 in the same period. Similar increases in supported scientists and institutions are planned for centres of excellence and cooperation between the academia and industry sectors.