Last month, the New Zealand government released the first “Science and Innovation System Performance Report,” an annual analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of New Zealand’s science industry. Compared to other Small Advanced Economies such as Denmark, Ireland, Finland, Israel and Australia, New Zealand has the lowest proportion of GDP to R&D, spending 1.17% in 2014. However, New Zealand publishes 15.6 research papers per million dollars spent, indicating that the science and innovation industry is small but industrious.

By sector, the country’s R&D focuses largely on agricultural and biological sciences, as well as health professions. In 2014, NZD 179 million ($117.9 million) was spent on health R&D by the higher education sector, 22% of the total NZD 817 million ($538.3 million) the sector spent on R&D. Also in 2014, 30,000 researchers worked as full-time equivalent staff. The majority of researchers were in higher education, but the data include students doing research as a part of their studies; excluding that data, the private sector employs the greatest number of researchers, which jumped from approximately 7,000 in 2012 to 10,000 in 2014. By 2020, government R&D expenditure is forecast to reach NZD 1.6 billion ($1.1 billion), a 23% increase from 2016, due to new budgets allocated for science as per the Innovative New Zealand initiative introduced in 2016’s federal budget.

Source: New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment