In 2010 German business spent a total of 46.93 billion euros on internal research and development – 3.7 per cent more than in 2009. These figures were reported by the Stifterverband für die Deutsche Wissenschaft in its current survey. Thus the proportion of business research investment as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) remained at practically the same level as the previous year at 1.89 per cent. Together with state expenditure on R&D the proportion amounted to an estimated 2.82 per cent. According to the latest planning data companies in Germany invested around 49.34 billion euros in 2011; the Stifterverband is even forecasting 49.9 billion euros in 2012.

In contrast, the R&D proportion for the whole European Union was only at an estimated 1.9 per cent in 2010. Thus the EU states missed the target they had set themselves of spending at least three per cent of gross domestic product on R&D investments by a long way. However, the President of the Stifterverband der Wissenschaft, Arend Oetker, assessed developments in Germany positively. The ambitious target induced the German government significantly to increase its research spending. According to the report, the financing share of the state in comparison with business grew noticeably for the first time in 15 years from 2008.

In official rankings of R&D expenditure German companies do not do very well in international comparison. If German companies’ R&D expenditure is considered in relation to sales across all sectors, at 3.5 per cent they are well behind competitors from Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden with 5 per cent each, US companies with 4.8 per cent and Japanese groups with 3.9 per cent. That these figures distort reality has now been proven by the Deutsche Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (DIW Berlin, or German Institute for Economic Research) in a study. According to the researchers, if you compare the R&D intensity of competing companies sector by sector, German companies often do better than competitors from the USA, Japan and Europe.

Thus German companies in the chemicals, electrical engineering and mechanical engineering sectors invest a considerably higher proportion of their sales in R&D than their competitors in the USA, Japan or Europe. The specific mechanical engineering figures: Germany 4.4 per cent, the Rest of Europe, USA and Japan 2.7 per cent each. The German pharmaceutical industry is behind Japan in second place.

The DIW Berlin sees the sector structure as the reason for the distortion and not the R&D output of German companies as such. According to the study Germany fell back in general R&D statistics because there were different sector specialisations in the countries compared. In addition, Germany was only represented with a few large companies in development-intensive sectors, such as broadcasting technology and telecommunications, computer production and science-intensive services.