Back
The State Audit Office will organize discussion “How to improve business innovation support policy?” on 29 November 2023.
BRIEFLY
- In the programming period 2014-2020, the projects implemented with the support of the public funding of 681 million euros have not succeeded to achieve such results that would contribute to the goal of the National Industrial Policy Guidelines, to improve the competitiveness and productivity of enterprises, significantly.
- The problems identified in the previous period are still not solved systematically and consistently. We risk that the 721 million euros planned for innovation support will not achieve the intended development of the national economy in the programming period 2021-2027 either.
- Latvia implements similar support measures as elsewhere in the European Union, and the “set” of measures is even broader. There are support measures for innovations, but they fail to achieve the goals.
- At the same time, we lag behind the average EU level in international rankings and our neighbouring countries in terms of innovation performance.
Innovation development in Latvia is largely dependent on funding from EU funds. During the previous EU programming period (2014–2020), there were 681 million euros of public co-financing used for innovation support measures in Latvia but to achieve the objectives set in the National Industrial Policy Guidelines 2014-2020 (NIPG2020), to improve the competitiveness and productivity of enterprises, have not been achieved.
The State Audit Office of Latvia has completed this audit, in which it assessed how the responsible ministries, the Ministry of Economics and the Ministry of Education and Science, planned and implemented innovation support policy. Those support measures with purpose to develop innovations in enterprises, thus promoting their competitiveness and productivity, were assessed in particular.
It was concluded that (1) activities of the Ministry of Economics and the Ministry of Education an Science when planning the policy for 2014-2020, have not been sufficient, so that the public funding of 681 million euros for innovation support projects would affect the objectives set by NIPG2020 significantly; (2) although the Ministry of Economics and the Ministry of Education and Science have improved the planning of indicators for innovation support measures in some areas, it has been found that the previously identified problems in policy planning are still not being addressed. This creates a risk that also in the programming period 2021-2027 (721 million euros allocated to innovation support measures), the intended development of the national economy will not be achieved.
