R&D expenditures in the business enterprise sector, higher education sector and the government sector were 55.7 billion ISK in 2017, or 2.13% of GDP. R&D expenditures were 53 billion ISK in 2016, or 2.12% of GDP and in 2015 the expenditures were 50.5 billion ISK or 2.20% of GDP. R&D expenditures as percentage of GDP are thus stable from 2016 to 2017.
The data collection covers the business enterprise sector, private non-profits sector, the higher education sector and the government sector. R&D expenditures in the business enterprise sector and the private non-profit sector were 36 billion ISK, while the expenditures were 17.3 billion ISK in the higher education sector and 2.3 billion ISK in the government sector.
Expenditures as percentage of GDP are subject to changes in official figures on GDP, and R&D expenditures on previous years may also be updated following later data collections. The official figures on R&D expenditures in 2015 and 2016 have thus been updated along with the latest figures. The figures are released annually and collected each year from the higher education and government sector. However, data are only collected every other year from the business enterprise sector.