GERD (Gross Expenditure on Research and Development)

Gross Expenditure on Research and Development (GERD) is the internationally standardised aggregate measure of a country's total research investment in a given year, summing spending from every funding source, government departments and public research institutions, private industry, higher education institutions, and non-profit organisations, regardless of who actually performs the research. It is most commonly expressed as a percentage of GDP, allowing cross-country comparison of research intensity independent of absolute economy size. A critical distinction, frequently confused in commentary, is between the funding share (who pays for research) and the performance share (who actually carries it out); a private firm may fund research performed at a public university, so a rising private funding share does not necessarily mean private laboratories are doing more research themselves. India's GERD stood at about 0.84 per cent of GDP in FY24, according to R&D Statistics tabled in the Rajya Sabha on 31 July 2026, against a long-stated national aspiration of 2 per cent of GDP and considerably below China's approximately 2.69 per cent and the roughly 3 to 5 per cent typical of leading innovation economies. Within India's GERD, private industry funded 51.8 per cent in 2023-24, crossing the halfway mark for the first time and inverting a historically state-dominated funding structure built around institutions like DRDO, CSIR, DAE, ICAR and ISRO. This shift is analytically ambiguous: it may reflect genuine growth in private research investment (global capability centres, pharmaceutical development, semiconductor design), a change in survey coverage or definitional reclassification that raises the measured private share without any real change in behaviour, or public funding stagnating relative to a growing private base, none of which is unambiguously positive if the underlying GERD-to-GDP ratio remains low.

• 1 GERD = Gross Expenditure on Research and Development, the total national research spend from all funding sources, usually expressed as % of GDP.
• 2 India's GERD: about 0.84 per cent of GDP in FY24 (R&D Statistics tabled in Rajya Sabha, 31 July 2026), supersedes the older, commonly cited 0.6-0.7 per cent figure.
• 3 National aspiration: 2 per cent of GDP; China's GERD is about 2.69 per cent; leading innovation economies run 3-5 per cent.
• 4 Private industry funded 51.8 per cent of India's GERD in 2023-24, crossing 50 per cent for the first time, inverting the historically state-dominated funding pattern.
• 5 Distinguish funding share (who pays) from performance share (who actually does the research), the 51.8 per cent figure is a funding share.
• 6 A rising private share can reflect genuine growth, measurement/reclassification changes, or public funding stagnation, these have very different policy implications.
• 7 Basic and long-horizon research (e.g. human-rating a launch vehicle) has no appropriable commercial return and will not be funded by the private sector regardless of its overall GERD share.

India's private sector crossing 51.8 per cent of GERD in 2023-24 was described as a diagnostic rather than an achievement, since GERD itself remains only 0.84 per cent of GDP, far below the 2 per cent national target, meaning the absolute research effort stays modest even as its composition shifts.