Polish firms to expand R&D budgets - report

As many as 67 percent of Polish firms said they are going to increase their R&D expenditures in the next 3-5 years, showed a recent report by Deloitte consulting company. However, they rely on the EU funds too much and majority of them do not have a firm strategy towards carrying out such activities. Last year, nearly half of the Polish companies (48 percent) committed 3 percent of their turnover to R&D related operations, while in 2013 it applied to only 26 percent of the Polish businesses. The CEE region average stood at 51 percent and Estonia performed the best (47 percent of firms earmarked over 10 percent of their turnover to R&D activity). The report also indicated that only 30 percent of the surveyed firms have an R&D strategy, rest of them make decisions ad hoc. What is more, in over 54 percent of cases, the main source of financing of such projects were public funds, including the EU budget. In 2013, the total expenditures for R&D projects were worth 0.87 percent of the Polish GDP.