- The Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister (EAC-PM) has released a report titled ‘R&D Expenditure Ecosystem’.
- The report has said that the growth in research and development(R&D) expenditure should be commensurate with the economy’s growth and should be targeted to reach at least 2% of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2022.
- The report has pointed out that India’s public investment in R&D as a fraction of GDP has remained stagnant over the last two decades.
- It has remained constant at around 0.6% to 0.7% of GDP and this is well below the major countries such as the United States (US)(2.8%), China (2.1%), Israel (4.3%) and Korea (4.2%).
- The report has said that government expenditure on R&D is undertaken almost entirely by the central government.It has called for greater participation of state government and the private sector in overall R&D spending.
- To stimulate the private sector’s investment in R&D from current 0.35% of GDP,it has suggested that a minimum percentage of turn-over of the company may be invested in R&D by medium and large enterprises registered in India.
- The report has recommended that states can partner with Centre to jointly fund research and innovation programmes through socially designed Central Sponsored Schemes(CSS).
- The report also pitched for creating 30 dedicated R&D Exports Hub and a corpus of Rs 5,000 crore for funding mega projects with cross cutting themes which are of national interest.
- PMEAC is a non-constitutional, non-permanent and independent body constituted to give economic advice to the Government of India, specifically the Prime Minister.
- The council serves to highlight key economic issues facing the country to the government of India from a neutral viewpoint.It advises the Prime Minister on economic issues like inflation, microfinance, and industrial output.
