NEW STATISTICS ON R&D IN AUSTRALIA
Thursday, September 15, 2011 The Australian Bureau of Statistics have just released figures outlining expenditure by Australian businesses on Research and Development over 2009/10. Whilst there was a downward trend in investment from previous years, current trends in 2011 point to a strong turnaround from major corporates. Encouragingly, the IT field accounted for more than 80% of total Business Expenditure on Research and Development. See the Source link for more details.
During 2009-10, expenditure on R&D by Australian businesses was $16,685 million. Business expenditure on R&D (BERD) decreased by 3% in current price terms and 5% in chain volume terms, compared to 2008-09. The industry divisions of Manufacturing and Mining continued to be the largest contributors to total BERD in 2009-10, contributing $4,219 million (25%) and $3,695 million (22%), respectively. Financial and insurance services ($2,651 million or 16%) and Professional, scientific and technical services ($2,516 million or 15%) were the next largest contributors.
The research fields of Engineering and Information and computing sciences accounted for more than 80% of total BERD in 2009-10. This was also the case in previous years. Engineering ($8,790 million in 2009-10) had the largest decrease in proportional share of total BERD compared to 2008-09 (down from 55% to 53%). In contrast, over the same period, Information and computing sciences ($4,763 million in 2009-10) had the largest increase in proportional share of total BERD (up from 26% to 28%).
BERD as a proportion of GDP decreased between 2008-09 and 2009-10, down from 1.38% to 1.30%.
Source: Paper 8104.0 - Research and Experimental Development, 2009-10, Australian Bureau of Statistics
