Research and development (R&D) expenditures in the business enterprise sector, the higher education sector and the government sector were 50.9 billion ISK in 2016, amounting to 2.08% of GDP. In 2015, R&D expenditures were 48.5 billion ISK, or 2.17% of GDP. Proportionally, R&D expenditures decreased by 0.09% of GDP, although they increased by 2.4 billion ISK between years. In the business enterprise sector R&D expenditures were 32.1 billion ISK, 16.3 billion ISK in the higher education sector and 2.4 billion in the government sector.
Data is collected annually in the higher education sector and the government sector, but every second year in the business enterprise sector. The data collections for the business enterprise sector, items on source of funding for R&D and R&D personnel are only collected for the year preceding the data collection but not for the estimated R&D of the year of the data collection itself. Tables on these subjects are thus only updated every other year. Other tables on R&D are updated annually and are now available on the website of Statistics Iceland, under Business sectors: Science and technology: R&D.
It should be noted that figures from 2015, published 11 October 2016, have been updated, taking into account figures on the GDP from 2015, published in September that year. Updating the data resulted in changes of the total R&D expenditures, as percentage of GDP, from 2.19% to 2.17% of GDP.