FY24 R&D spend stood at 0.84% of GDP

India's gross expenditure on research and development (GERD), including government and private spending, rose 85 per cent from Rs 1.33 trillion in 2019-20 to Rs 2.45 trillion in 2023-24. However, its share of GDP increased from 0.66 per cent to 0.84 per cent only, still far below India's target of 2 per cent by 2035, the government informed the Lok Sabha. Even at 0.84 per cent, India trails most BRICS peers. China spent 2.69 per cent of its GDP on research and development (R&D) in 2024, Brazil 1.19 per cent in 2023, and Russia about 0.94 per cent in 2024. South Africa, at 0.61 per cent in 2022, and Vietnam, at around 0.41 per cent in 2023, spent a smaller share of GDP on R&D than India. The composition of R&D spending also changed significantly. The government's share fell from 66.2 per cent in 2019-2020 to 48.2 per cent in 2023-2024, while private industry's share rose from 33.8 per cent to 51.8 per cent, marking the first time private capital accounted for the majority of India's R&D spending. In absolute terms, private-sector R&D expenditure increased from Rs 44,754 crore in 2019-20 to Rs 1.18 lakh crore in 2023-24, a two-and-a-half-fold rise, translating into a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.52 per cent. State governments, however, continued to play only a marginal role. State-sector R&D spending grew at a CAGR of just 3.4 per cent between 2019-20 and 2023-24 and accounted for only about 4 per cent of the national total in 2023-24, underscoring the limited role of states in India's R&D ecosystem. The higher education sector, comprising public and private institutions, recorded the fastest growth among all segments, with R&D spending rising from Rs 9,942 crore in 2019-20 to Rs 30,909 crore in 2023-24, a CAGR of 32.79 per cent. Despite the sharp increase, it accounted for only 12.6 per cent of total national R&D expenditure in 2023-24. Meanwhile, central sector R&D expenditure grew at a CAGR of 5.45 per cent over the period, increasing from Rs 69,317 crore in 2019-20 to Rs 85,712 crore in 2023-24.