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Portuguese SMEs are in the front platoon in the European Union when it comes to innovation. More than 66% invest in innovation projects, where the overall average stands at 49.5%, and only five countries even reach the 60% mark.
From a universe of over 25 million micro, small and medium-sized companies in the European Union, only 49.5% invest in innovation. In Portugal, that percentage rises to 66.4%, placing it ahead of the remaining 28, accompanied solely by Finland, Luxembourg, Germany and Austria, the only ones whose innovation investments are above 60%.
At the bottom are Latvia, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria and Poland, where the percentage of innovative SMEs varies between 20.3% and 29.2%. Standing out, for the negative, is Romania, where only 9.8% of SMEs invest in innovation.
However, if the number of companies of this dimension involved in Research in Development is a brilliant indicator – as says the Annual Report of SMEs, from the European Union –, the absolute value applied into innovation does not go beyond 0.2% of GDP.