Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020

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Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020
funding amounts it is followed by the Federal 
Ministry of Finance (BMF). The reason the Federal 
Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, 
Mobility, Innovation and Technology (BMK) had a 
comparatively small percentage (2.0%) was that 
most of the R&D funds were outsourced to the 
federal funding agencies Austrian Research Promo-
tion Agency (FFG) and Austria Wirtschaftsservice 
(aws).
Fig. 8-1: Ongoing and completed R&D projects and funding amounts by ministerial department (in %), 2019
1.5%
10.7%
32.6%
6.6%
1.7%
12.4%
2.2%
7.5%
19.0%
5.4%
0.5%
0.2%
5.2%
73.2%
1.0%
0.7%
8.5%
1.4%
1.9%
5.9%
2.0%
0.1%
BKA
BMASGK
BMBWF
BMDW
BMEIA
BMF
BMI
BMLV
BMNT
BMVIT
BMVRDJ
Source: Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (BMBWF), Federal research database B_f.dat (excl. “major” global financ-
ing with funding amounts higher than €500,000).

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9. Statistics

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Austrian Research and Technology Report 2020
9.1 Funding of gross domestic expenditure on 
R&D (Tables 9-1 and 9-2)
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The annual global estimate of expenditure on re-
search and experimental development (R&D) for the 
current year was not made in 2020. The imponderable 
economic effects of the “coronavirus crisis” do not al-
low in April 2020 for a serious estimate of the expect-
ed research intensity for 2020.
Therefore, based on the available results of the 
2017 R&D survey and the available documents on the 
financial statements and budget estimates of the 
federal and regional governments, the previous year’s 
2019 R&D global estimate was revised, and in the 
process the 2016-2019 values were updated.
For 2019, the research intensity is estimated to be 
3.18%, a slight increase compared to 3.14% in 2018. 
Of the total research expenditure in 2019 (about 
€12.6 billion), the largest share of 47.6% (about €6.04 
billion) was financed by Austrian companies. The fed-
eral government contributed 24.6% (about €3.12 bil-
lion). Indirect R&D funding in the form of the research 
premium accounted for 6.0%, i.e. over €750 million. 
Regional governments contributed 4.3% (about €550 
million), 15.9% (about €2.02 billion) came from abroad 
and 1.6% (slightly more than €200 million) were fund-
ed by other sources. Most of the funding from abroad 
comes from foreign-based companies whose subsid-
iaries conduct research in Austria, and includes re-
turns from EU research programmes.