Citing the global economic slowdown, government today said it would be difficult to double the spending on scientific research and development to two per cent of the GDP by next year.
"We spend about one per cent of our GDP on scientific R&D while the western countries spend anything between three and four per cent of their GDP.
"We had announced that the spending on scientific R&D will be hiked to two per cent of the GDP but that will take some time due to economic slowdown," Prithviraj Chavan, Minister of State for Science and Technology said at a function in New Delhi.
He said the government has offered enhanced tax breaks to entities that spend on in-house research and development.
Chavan pointed out that more than three quarters of the total R&D funding in the country is done by the government and exhorted the private sector to step in the innovation segment.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, in his address to Indian Science Congress in 2007, had said his government was committed to increasing the annual expenditure on science and technology from less than 1 per cent of the GDP to 2 per cent of the GDP in the next five years.
According to the ministry of science and technology, R&D expenditure as percentage of Gross National Product in 200506 was 0.89 per cent as compared to 0.81 per cent in 2002-03.
Of the 0.89 per cent R&D expenditure in India, 80 per cent is by public sector while the private sector share is only 20 per cent. In China and the US, the public sector share is only 30 per cent each while in Japan it is only 18 per cent, government had told Parliament.
Earlier, Chavan handed over awards to 15 winners of the DST-Lockheed Martin India Innovation Growth Programme for the 2009-10.
The programme, launched in March 2007 by Lockheed Martin and Department of Science and Technology, has helped several Indian innovators successfully transition their technologies to both the Indian and global markets.
