The report, which MTA President E. Szilveszter Vizi is to
present to Parliament on Wednesday, shows that the decline in
funding for R+D seen in previous years has turned into growth,
though it is still below the European Union average of 1.9 percent
of GDP.
In 2006, central budget funds provided 44.8 percent of R+D
spending, down from 49.6 percent in 2005, the report said.
The number of new patents filed shrank from 1,275 in 2005 to 924
in 2006, with the largest chunk (20-25 percent) related to
pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.
While Hungary has a satisfactory number of basic researchers and
ranks 26-27th in global publication and citation lists, it lags
behind in levels of innovation and lacks young innovators, the
report said.
Among the developments of the past few years, it noted that a
Hungarian researcher, Imre Toth, had been part of the team which
took a Hubble telescope image of a comet breakup in April 2006. It
added that the MTA’s Mathematics Institute had concluded a
co-operation agreement with the investment consultancy Morgan
Stanley, which plans to bring its financial centre to Budapest.
