Tamás Schanda pointed out: the call has the biggest budget among the innovation programmes this year and was so successful that it had to be reopened for another round with an increased budget.

As the state secretary explained: the call financed from the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund, announced with the support of the ITM in late May, aimed to encourage domestic SMEs and large companies to create marketable products and services with significant new content independently or in cooperation with higher education and research institutions. Such innovations do not only enhance the competitiveness of the respective companies, and the Hungarian economy as a whole, but can also contribute to the creation of new jobs – he added.

The interest of the applicants exceeded all expectations: the total amount of requested funds surpassed the available budget two and a half times already in the first week. By the second week, funding requests had exceeded HUF 100 billion, which demonstrates that domestic businesses see opportunities in research, development and innovation despite the pandemic – Tamás Schanda underlined.

Seeing the huge number of applicants, the ITM increased the original HUF 41 billion budget significantly to HUF 59 billion. Due to the outstanding success, the National Research, Development and Innovation Office announced a second round of the call in October adding another HUF 20 billion to the already increased budget for the same purposes – the ITM briefing states.

Source: MTI