UNESCO SCIENCE REPORT

South Asia
TRENDS IN R&D
A modest R&D effort
By international standards, countries in South Asia spend
modest amounts on research and development (R&D).
Gross domestic expenditure on R&D (GERD) even dropped
in Pakistan between 2007 and 2013 from 0.63% to 0.29%
of GDP, although the government did not survey the
business enterprise sector (Figure 21.5); this trend has been
accompanied by an attempt in Pakistan to decentralize
higher education and research spending, devolving it
to the provincial level. In Sri Lanka, investment remains
stable but low, at 0.16% of GDP in 2010, less than the R&D
intensity of Nepal (0.30%), which has improved markedly
since 2008, and far below that of India (0.82%). This lack
of investment correlates with low researcher intensity and
limited integration in global research networks.
As shown in Figure 21.6, the majority of countries in the
region lie within a narrow range in terms of their ranking for
private-sector expenditure on R&D in the World Economic
Forum’s Global Competitiveness Index, at between 2.28 and
3.34 in 2014, with Sri Lanka recording the best performance.
Since 2010, only Nepal has shown a marginal improvement
in private-sector spending on R&D. With the exception of
Bangladesh and Nepal, South Asia’s private sector is more
implicated in R&D than in sub-Saharan Africa (average of
2.66) but less so than in emerging and developing countries,
in general (3.06 on average), the notable exception being
Sri Lanka. Above all, the countries of the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are streets
ahead of South Asia, with an average score of 4.06, reflecting
the higher level of market development in industrialized
economies.
Overall, R&D spending in South Asia has not kept pace with
economic growth over the past five years. The fact that
both the public and private sectors exhibit similar trends
is indicative of the broader lack of capacity and failure to
prioritize research. This is also attributable to the relatively
low levels of disposable income and commercial market
development, as well as the limited margin for manoeuvre in
government budgets when it comes to allocating funds
to R&D.
Chapter 21
Figure 21.5: GERD/GDP ratio in South Asia, 2006–2013
1.0
0.8
0.80
0.79
0.84
0.82
0.80
India 0.82
0.63
0.6
0.45
0.4
Nepal 0.30
0.26 0.33
Pakistan 0.29
0.2
0.17 0.11
Sri Lanka 0.16
0.0
0.05
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
Note: Data are unavailable for Bhutan, Bangladesh and the Maldives. The data for Nepal are partial and relate to Government R&D budget instead of R&D
expenditure; those for Pakistan exclude the business enterprise sector.
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, June 2015
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