Spending on research and development (R&D), science and technology saw year-on-year increase in China in 2008, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said Tuesday.

R&D spending reached 461.6 billion yuan (US$67.6 billion) in 2008, up 24.4 percent year on year. It accounted for 1.54 percent of the national gross domestic product, 0.1 percentage point higher than in 2007, the NBS figures show.

Companies' R&D expenditures were 338.2 billion yuan in 2008, up26.1 percent year on year, accounting for 73.3 percent share of the total. Other expenditures came from government research institutes and institutions of higher learning, according to the NBS data.

R&D spending in the country's eastern Jiangsu, Shandong, and Zhejiang provinces, the southern Guangdong Province, Shanghai, and Beijing reached 276.8 billion yuan, accounting for more than 60 percent of the total.

The R&D spending of the provinces and municipalities each exceeded 30 billion yuan, according to the NBS.

Meanwhile, fiscal expenditures on science and technology were 258.2 billion yuan, up 22.2 percent, accounting for 4.12 percent of the gross fiscal expenditures in the same year.

(Xinhua News Agency December 16, 2009)