More than 41% of this was received by domestic businesses, and 30% by university and academic research centres.

According to the 2017 disbursement figures of the NRDI Fund, the major part of domestic RDI funds (HUF 34.2 billion i.e. EUR 112 million) was spent on facilitating the RDI activity of Hungarian micro, small and medium enterprises and large companies. In addition, HUF 25 billion (EUR 82 million) was disbursed from the NRDI Fund for research projects conducted in 26 higher education institutions and various research centres of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Part of the disbursements of the Fund was spent on the costs and fees of membership in international organisations (primarily in expensive research infrastructures enabling the expansion of knowledge and the development of practical applications).

Amount of funding disbursed from the NRDI Fund and its legal predecessors for RDI projects

The amount of earmarked budgets and funding actually paid is different (the the latter was HUF 83.3 billion in 2017) as the budget of funding programmes is disbursed in several years.

The largest amount of funding paid in 2017 under NRDI Fund calls in 2016 and 2017 and exceeded HUF 20 billion (EUR 65.5 million) and was spent on projects funded under calls promoting the RDI activities of businesses (in-house R&D, the development of a startup ecosystem and industrial property protection). Besides, more than HUF 7 billion (EUR 23 million) was spent on the development of digital production technologies in business-research cooperation and on agri-innovation and biotechnology projects (VKE_17), HUF 3.7 billion (over EUR 12 million) was spent to continue the National Brain Research Programme and implement the National Quantum Technology Programme (NKP_17) and around HUF 9.6 billion (EUR 31.5 million) on discovery research (researcher-initiated thematic projects and postdoc grants) from the NRDI Fund in 2017.

A significant part of the HUF 83.3 billion disbursed in 2017 was spent on projects launched as a result of funding decisions adopted since 2015. Since 2015 around 2000 projects have received non-refundable funding from the NRDI Fund in a total amount of nearly HUF 250 billion (EUR 820 million). According to the 2018 Programme Strategy of the NRDI Fund, the total budget of calls to be announced this year is HUF 81.85 billion (over EUR 268 million).