Scottish Rural Development Programme 2014-2020: ex-post evaluation - main report

26. GDP in research and development

This chapter answers CEQ 23: To what extent has the RDP contributed to achieving the EU2020 headline target of investing 3% of EU’s GDP in research and development and innovation?

Response

According to SG statistics, Scotland’s Gross Expenditure on Research and Development (GERD) was €5.8 billion in 2022, 6.9% of the UK total. Note that due to changes in the methodology for calculating Business Enterprise Research and Development (BERD) introduced in 2022, it is not possible to make comparisons to previous years.

Most of the total in Scotland was accounted for by business enterprise (€3.3 billion) and higher education (€2.2 billion), the rest coming from government and private (non-profit) sectors. The research and development expenditure figures have been converted to Euros using the standard exchange rate of £1 to €1.20.

Scotland’s GERD in 2022 represented 2.58% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), just below that for the UK (2.77%) and just above the EU (2.27%).

The proportion of total SRDP funding devoted to research and development was very small. The Programme has, however, supported specific initiatives which aim to foster innovation, most notably the EIPs operated under KTIF (see CEQ 1) and the RISS delivered by the Soil Association Scotland in partnership with other delivery organisations (see also CEQ 21 and CEQ 30).

Links between the primary sector and the research and development community, fostered by several schemes including but not limited to the FAS, were covered in the answer to CEQ 2. However, these were largely concerned with disseminating research findings rather than investing in primary research and development, which cannot be funded under these schemes. That said, some supported KTIF projects carried out small-scale research and development activities within groups.

EKOS conclusion

The SRDP 2014-2020 has contributed to achieving the EU 2020 headline target of investing 3% of EU’s GDP in research and development and innovation, but on a very minor scale in proportion to the total expenditure realised.