Independent rankings built from public data — every figure traceable to the body that published it.
Report year 1999Data year 1999
Gross domestic expenditure on R&D (% of GDP)Higher is better — rank 1 leadsPublished by UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
28 editions (1996–2023), 52 to 102 countries. Gross domestic expenditure on research and development as a share of GDP, counting business, government, higher education and non-profit spending together. The standard measure of how much of an economy is aimed at producing new knowledge, and SDG indicator 9.5.1. ⚠ It counts money in, not discoveries out — Israel leads 2023 at 6.35%, which says what the country spends and nothing about what it found. ⚠ Editions reporting fewer than 50 countries are not written — that drops UIS’s trailing stub year, which opens with a handful of early reporters, and any thin historical year. ⚠ UIS ranks nobody, so no rank is stored; the POSITION on the statistics page is derived here by ordering the score and labelled as ours.
Research and Development Spending 1999 — UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS)
Cite as: UNESCO Institute for Statistics. UIS Data Browser. Montreal: UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0
UIS release 20260507-91260335. Read from the UIS API at full precision, as published — nothing is rounded here. ⚠ Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0, so anything derived from it carries the same ShareAlike obligation. UIS publishes no rank, so none is stored and none is derived here.
68 rows × 3 columns · imported from the publisher’s published data file on
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| Country | ISO Code | Gross domestic expenditure on R&D (% of GDP) |
|---|---|---|
| Sweden | SWE | 3.3783 |
| Israel | ISR | 3.2120 |
| Finland | FIN | 3.0569 |
| Japan | JPN | 2.8467 |
| United States | USA | 2.5436 |
| Germany | DEU | 2.3277 |
| Iceland | ISL | 2.2351 |
| Denmark | DNK | 2.1286 |
| France | FRA | 2.1165 |
| South Korea | KOR | 1.9446 |
| Belgium | BEL | 1.9056 |
| Austria | AUT | 1.8525 |
| Netherlands | NLD | 1.8199 |
| Singapore | SGP | 1.8162 |
| Canada | CAN | 1.7498 |
| United Kingdom | GBR | 1.6227 |
| Norway | NOR | 1.6044 |
| Slovenia | SVN | 1.3429 |
| Ireland | IRL | 1.1514 |
| Czechia | CZE | 1.0430 |
| Russia | RUS | 0.9962 |
| Italy | ITA | 0.9787 |
| Ukraine | UKR | 0.9697 |
| New Zealand | NZL | 0.9639 |
| Serbia | SRB | 0.8793 |
| Belarus | BLR | 0.8452 |
| Spain | ESP | 0.8392 |
| Croatia | HRV | 0.8316 |
| China | CHN | 0.7430 |
| India | IND | 0.7241 |
| Portugal | PRT | 0.6812 |
| Poland | POL | 0.6779 |
| Estonia | EST | 0.6771 |
| Hungary | HUN | 0.6707 |
| Slovakia | SVK | 0.6441 |
| Greece | GRC | 0.5909 |
| Bulgaria | BGR | 0.5369 |
| Sudan | SDN | 0.5301 |
| Lithuania | LTU | 0.4998 |
| Cuba | CUB | 0.4583 |
| Hong Kong | HKG | 0.4577 |
| Türkiye | TUR | 0.4556 |
| Argentina | ARG | 0.4534 |
| Romania | ROU | 0.3983 |
| Azerbaijan | AZE | 0.3929 |
| Costa Rica | CRI | 0.3676 |
| Latvia | LVA | 0.3619 |
| North Macedonia | MKD | 0.3281 |
| Mexico | MEX | 0.3272 |
| Mauritius | MUS | 0.3060 |
| Bolivia | BOL | 0.2984 |
| Georgia | GEO | 0.2877 |
| Panama | PAN | 0.2830 |
| Saint Lucia | LCA | 0.2737 |
| Thailand | THA | 0.2484 |
| Uruguay | URY | 0.2242 |
| Cyprus | CYP | 0.2181 |
| Armenia | ARM | 0.2140 |
| Kuwait | KWT | 0.1976 |
| Egypt | EGY | 0.1865 |
| Kazakhstan | KAZ | 0.1838 |
| Kyrgyzstan | KGZ | 0.1799 |
| Mongolia | MNG | 0.1502 |
| Trinidad and Tobago | TTO | 0.1229 |
| Pakistan | PAK | 0.1159 |
| Peru | PER | 0.0985 |
| Madagascar | MDG | 0.0834 |
| Myanmar | MMR | 0.0441 |