External factors drive innovations in Bulgaria: report

Innovations in Bulgaria have grown due to external factors and despite the obstacles at local level, according to the annual report Innovation.bg that was presented here on Tuesday.

"Research and development (R&D) spending in Bulgaria rose by about 26 percent in 2014 as compared to the previous year - the highest growth of this indicator since 2000, mostly as a result of the participation of private sector companies in international value added networks," said the report, issued by Applied Research and Communications Fund for the 11th consecutive year.

Since 2010, the main sources of R&D investment have been foreign investments and the European structural funds, the importance of which for the national economy has grown, the report said. In 2014, this trend continued and their share in the total R&D spending reached over 51 percent.

"Given its pull effect in terms of business expenditure for R&D, external financing becomes central to the existence and development of the national research and innovation system," the report said.

Meanwhile, innovations in the Balkan country were hampered by obstacles at the national and local levels including the lack of understanding among policymakers of the importance of innovation, low administrative capacity, lack of mechanisms for promoting entrepreneurial and innovation culture, and corruption, the report said.

"There is no comprehensive vision on the priorities of the national economy and the innovation system in particular, resulting in ad hoc policies and inconsistent and unsustainable measures for their enforcement," the document said.

"The input indicators of the national innovation ecosystem and of its functioning vary significantly from year to year, thus highlighting the precariousness of the Bulgarian innovation policy, which has no clear direction and parameters," it said.

Higher education is the component of the national innovation ecosystem sustaining the heaviest adverse effects, the report said.

For a fifth year in a row, the R&D budget of the higher education sector was decreasing. "In 2014, spending through university research funds for R&D was halved, while the decrease compared to the peak 2009 was 90 percent," the report said.

"A worrying sign is the extremely low patent activity of the higher education sector," the report said. Only eight out of 51 higher education institutions have registered patents. In 2014, for a second year in a row there was a fall in the number of research publications, the report added. Endit