Increased R&D funds for defence purposes in 2024

Government budget allocations for R&D are reported by socioeconomic objective, which shows the government’s priorities. The results indicate that defence is a prioritised objective for R&D funding in the budget year 2024. Statistics Sweden estimates that SEK 2.36 billion of the R&D funds will be allocated to defence. This is an increase of SEK 481 million, or approximately 25.6 percent, compared to 2023. The increase is in part due to increased appropriations to certain defence agencies where a fraction of the grants is estimated to be funding for R&D, as wells as increased research grants to the Swedish Defence Research Agency and the Swedish Armed Forces. Procurement of materiel and facilities is the grant that drives the increase in R&D funding for defence purposes, with an increase of SEK 198.4 million. The reason behind the marked increase in R&D funds from this grant is that the total funds allocated to the grant, of which 1 percent is estimated to be R&D funds, increase by approximately SEK 21.7 billion.

R&D budget allocations to energy and for the general advancement of knowledge from other sources than GUF are the socioeconomic objectives that increase the most, apart from defence. Compared to 2023, energy increases by approximately SEK 41 million, while the general advancement of knowledge increases by about SEK 297 million or 2.6 percent.

Budget allocations for R&D under the expenditure area[1] Defence and contingency measures shows a similar development as R&D funding for defence purposes, increasing by approximately 26.1 percent, from 2.1 to SEK 2.7 billion, compared to 2023. The expenditure area also includes R&D funds to civil socioeconomic objectives which is the reason why the sum does not correspond to the estimated R&D funds aimed at the improvement of defence. Likewise, R&D funds to defence can be included in other expenditure areas than Defence and contingency measures.

[1] The results are presented according to which expenditure area in the government budget the appropriations belong to.

Facts

The statistics for both 2023 and 2024 are preliminary and are based on the content of the provisional government budget. Final statistics for the reference year 2023 will be based on final budget appropriations and will be published on December 5^th, 2024.

The statistics are based on administrative data and R&D coefficients used for each budget item to estimate the budgeted R&D content. For more information, see Statistikens framställning under Dokumentation on the product website.

The survey follows guidelines set up by the OECD and published in the Frascati Manual, Guidelines for Collecting and Reporting Data on Research and Experimental Development, Frascati Manual (OECD, 2015). These statistics are also subject to the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 2020/1197 of 30 July 2020. The data is submitted to Eurostat, who produce compilations for the EU countries.