State financing for research and development declined by a substantial 30.9% to HUF 112 bln, accounting for 26.2% of total R&D funding in 2016, down from 34.6% a year earlier.
Businesses, on the other hand, played an increased role in funding research and development. The business sector spent more than HUF 241 bln on R&D in 2016, up 3.5% from a year earlier, and accounting for 56.4% of total R&D funding, compared to 49.7% in 2015.
Foreign resources for R&D came close to HUF 71 bln last year, up 1.2% from 2015. The share of foreign resources thus rose from 15.0% to 16.6%.
The trend of earlier years continued with the fall in the number of R&D units and in the number of staff actively engaged in research and development activity. In 2016, there were 2,727 research units, down 2.6% from a year earlier, while the number of people working in research fell 2.8%. The number of assistant staff per 100 researchers and developers was down to 24, from 28 in 2015.
About 54,600 people worked in R&D in Hungary last year, including 38,900 researchers and 9,100 assistants.
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