This dynamic growth of disbursements from the fund managed by the NRDI Office, ensuring state support to research, development and innovation, is connected to the renewed portfolio of competitive calls published for 2015-2016. It is expected that the total budget available for the continuously announced calls promoting the innovation activities and blue sky research of undertakings is going to increase in 2017.

The payments made in 2016 from the NRDI Fund managed by the Office amounted to EUR 276 million (HUF 83 billion), more than double the disbursements made in 2014 i.e. EUR 116 million (HUF 35 billion), showing a dynamic increase since 2015, and exceeding twice the disbursement figures in any of the previous five years.

RDI support by the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund and its predecessors

Payment figures for this year show that a substantial part of the support was granted to innovative undertakings. Besides them, research, development and innovation support was also granted to institutions of higher education and research centres. By the end of 2016, the majority of payments from the NRDI Fund was made on the basis of calls from 2016, whereas a smaller part was related to calls from 2015 or previous years. One of the reasons underlying the dynamic growth of Hungarian funds available to undertakings for innovation, research and development purposes was that the payments already performed out of the NRDI Fund significantly increased.

When comparing the disbursed amounts and the total budgets of the calls, it should be noted that the budgets of the programmes announced in any given year may be disbursed over a period of several years, therefore the amount of payments made in 2016 and the total budget of the calls announced in 2016 are different.

The National Research, Development and Innovation Office (the NRDI Office) managing the NRDI Fund created its comprehensive competitive portfolio with the aim of securing that the calls announced from the NRDI Fund can contribute – besides the blue sky researches – to the research infrastructure development of universities and research centres and also to the innovation programmes of the undertakings in the Central Hungarian region. For that purpose, besides the thematic research programmes and postdoctoral programmes promoting blue sky researches, in line with the target system of the calls of the Economic Development and Innovation Operativonal Programme (GINOP/EDIOP) announced in 2016 from EU funds for the less developed region, the NRDI Office announced the majority of the NRDI Fund calls as mirror calls of these, aiming to provide support to the applicants of the Central Hungarian region.

Among the calls announced in 2016, the following programmes had the largest budgets, implemented within the framework of two schemes: a programme worth of some EUR 120 million (HUF 36 billion), supporting the programmes implemented in the cooperation of undertakings and research centres, and a programme worth of some EUR 70 million (HUF 21 billion), promoting the independent research and development and innovation activities of the undertakings.

The total budget available out of the NRDI Fund for blue sky research continued to increase in 2016 as well, since the budget increased with some 15% compared to 2015, EUR 23 million (HUF 7 billion) were offered for researcher initiated thematic programmes, whereas EUR 6 million (HUF 1.8 billion) to postdoctoral grants.

According to the programme strategy already adopted by the Government for year 2017, the total budget of the fundamental research thematic programmes is going to be increased with 14%, totalling to EUR 26 million (HUF 8 billion). The total budget of the non-refundable funds promoting the implementation of independent corporate innovation programmes will be EUR 100 million (HUF 30 billion) in 2017, and in addition to this, a separate call, with the total budget of EUR 33 million (HUF 10 billion) will be offered to support the export oriented R&D activities of Hungarian undertakings as well. Further EUR 33 million (HUF 10 billion) will be available to promote the National Excellence Programmes and EUR 56 million (HUF 17 billion forints) to support the Competitiveness and Excellence cooperations, primarily targeting the applied research carried out with the cooperation of companies and universities.