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Singapore’s gross expenditure on research and development as a share of the country’s gross domestic product bounced back to 2.3% in 2011, the Agency for Science, Technology and Research said Friday.

The figure had been growing steadily from 0.9% in Y 1990 to peak at 2.6% in Y 2008. It then fell to 2.3% in 2009 and 2.1% in 2010.

The gross expenditure on research and development hit a new high of 7.4-B Singapore Dollars (US$6.1-B) in 2011, + 14.8% from the spending of 6.5-B Singapore Dollars in 2010.

The investment made by the private sector in research and development was up 17% Y-Y at 4.6-B Singapore Dollars in Y 2011. While the spending by the public sector grew by 11% to 2.8-B Singapore Dollars in Y 2011.

In the private sector, capital expenditure contracted by 24% Y-Y to 467.7-M Singapore Dollars in Y 2011, while manpower expenditure grew by 27% to 2.1-B Singapore Dollars.

Raj Thampuran, managing director of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research, said the statutory body has built different platforms to facilitate the cooperation and investment in research and development, including the cooperation between research institutions and companies.

In a bid to raise the competitiveness and drive the growth of its economy, Singapore has set a target of raising its gross expenditure as a share of gross domestic product to 3.5% by Y 2015.

The Agency for Science, Technology and Research said that the compound annual growth rate of gross expenditure in research and development in the ten years from Y 2002 to 2011 was 9.1%, reflecting sustained growth in such investments in Singapore.

According to the latest Main Science and Technology Indicators of the OECD Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States spent 2.8% of its GDP on research and development, compared with 1.8% in China and 3.3% in Japan.

The most research-intensive country or region in the world is Isreal, which spends 4.4% of its GDP on research and development, followed by Finland at 3.9%, South Korea at 3.7%, Sweden at 3.4% and Japan at 3.3%.