Just 16 Percent of Companies in Bulgaria Invest in Innovations

Bulgaria occupies the last spot among EU countries on investment in innovations, research of European statistics service Eurostat showed. Only 16 percent of the Bulgarian companies were involved in innovation activities, Eurostat said as quoted by Capital weekly. The study involved EU countries, Norway and Iceland.

According to the Lisbon Strategy requirements each EU country has to invest at least three per cent of its GDP in innovation while Bulgaria invests only 0.5 percent. The Lisbon Strategy tries to deal with low productivity and economic growth stagnation.

The real cooperation in the innovations sector for 2006 is low as more than half of the Bulgarian companies fail to interact with scientific organizations.

Less than 20 per cent of Bulgarian companies in northwest and central Bulgaria think that investing in innovation will increase their competitiveness, representative of research company Industry Consult Vassil Radoinovski said.

Most companies aim at cheap production, which is still possible as they use old machines and cheap labor, Radoinovski said. The companies’ priority is to survive rather than invest in innovation.