The funding available for scientific and technological research is being increased by 20 percent this year by the Chinese government, a senior official with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) said on Thursday.

Zhang Xiaoqiang, Vice Minister of the NDRC made his remarks at a forum of China's Eighth International Trade Fair for High-Tech Achievements held in Shenzhen City in south China's Guangdong Province.

The central government had increased its financial support for scientific research particularly in basic disciplines, said Zhang.

According to NDRC statistics China's spending on basic research had risen from 5.22 billion yuan (US$652.5 million) in 2001 to 13.12 billion yuan in 2005.

To ensure its goals in scientific and technological research are reached the country would continue to increase spending in these areas between 2006 to 2010, explained Zhang.

More efforts would be made to encourage enterprises to increase their spending on technological innovation and to become the main outlets of such work, Zhang added.

NDRC data shows that enterprises contributed 60.44 percent of total spending on technology research in 2001 with that figure rising to 68.32 percent in 2005.

Despite this the input of Chinese enterprises in scientific research makes up just 0.8 percent of their sales income which is much lower than the average level of three percent in developed countries.

(Xinhua News Agency October 13, 2006)