The Government adopted the National Research, Development and Innovation Strategy for 2014-2020, Minister of State for Economic Strategy Zoltán Cséfalvay announced.

He called it one of the key objectives of the programme to increase the share of R&D spending in Hungary from 1.2 percent to 1.8 percent of GDP, adding that almost two-thirds of funding comes from the private sector, and the Government wants to keep this “healthy proportion” also in the future.

He called it another top priority to increase the number of researchers from the current 37 thousand to more than 50 thousand by 2020 in Hungary.
Zoltán Cséfalvay is of the opinion that R&D&I will be given a prominent role in the new, seven-year EU fiscal period, when 8 percent of total funding is expected to be channelled to this field, he said.

The Ministry for National Economy considers it crucial to support R&D by “market-based” financial instruments besides the traditional schemes with unrefundable subsidies. These include, among others, combined loans, refundable grants, guarantees and capital-based financing.

The Minister of State considers the establishment of a support system very important, of which “certain elements are already visible, but some components are still missing:” The breakthrough in the field of venture capital financing Zoltán Cséfalvay called a success; this has led to the strengthening of technology-oriented small enterprises. A business start-up incubation scheme is about to be launched, and the cooperation between universities and the private sector shall also be enhanced.

One objective of the Strategy is to assist technology companies from the field of academia and to establish an institutional system for the support of applied R&D.

In the opinion of the Minister of State, additional R&D tax incentives are necessary, and the Ministry for National Economy is creating a task force for this purpose. He emphasized that as the Government has access to a R&D qualification base via the Hungarian Intellectual Property Office, it can be ensured that these tax incentives will applied only by enterprises with R&D activities.

Talking about the Strategy, Zoltán Cséfalvay remarked that the first draft of the Innovation Strategy was announced in autumn, and the final version, which takes into consideration the recommendations of 500 enterprises, was submitted to the Government as a result of a country-wide consultation series.

(Ministry for National Economy)