THE STATE AND THE KEY TRENDS IN FUNDING INNOVATIONS IN UKRAINE OVER 2015–2018

Abstract

Modern realia of rapid informatization of society trigger the increase of labor research intensity level when science becomes an immediate productive force. In turn, the innovation processes underpin the changes in social production as well as in public administration. The service sector is developing rapidly. Economic activity of business entities goes beyond the national economy boundaries and becomes more global, as evidenced by the growing role and significance of the information component in both the economic and the social domains. Based on the analysis of the total expenditure in a particular area out of all funding sources (S) and the ratio of total costs for a specific area in the total expenditure (E), with regard to a number of other indicators, the author suggests an overview of the current state, structure and major trends in the field of funding innovative activity in Ukraine. The recent research and publications review offered the opportunity to verify the relevance of the need to explore the contemporary issues relating to the state and the basic tendencies of funding innovations in Ukraine. To accomplish the objectives of the study, the following general and specific economic research methods have been applied, in particular, the methods of aggregation, data grouping and graphical display along with making use of Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to build cross-tabulation and the graph that enables to visualize the trend embedded in numerical information. The study provides data revealing the actual state and the key trends in the area of innovation funding in Ukraine in recent years and argues that despite minimization of the financial factor effect as a disincentive to business innovations within 2008–2016, this factor challenges further in-depth analysis and research. It is demonstrated that the situation as to government financing of innovations in Ukraine is characterized by a drop of innovation expenses by domestic enterprises in 2018 compared to 2015 by 11.8%; the dominance of the enterprise equity capital in total structure of innovation expenditures and the increase of loans in the structure of innovation costs; the increased share of innovation expenditure from state and local budgets; growth in business spending on R&D in the structure of innovation expenditures; the spending pattern of industrial enterprises is biased towards domestic R&D rather than to external R&D investments. The research findings revealed a slight reduction in the volume of total operating expenditure of industrial enterprises for the purchase of machinery, equipment and software within the period 2015–2018. The highest expenditures of industrial enterprises for the purchase of machinery, equipment and software have been observed in the enterprises of Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia and Kharkiv regions and in the city of Kyiv. The suggested characteristic of one of the main factors of impact on innovative activities (financing) contributes to expanding the understanding of the current state, scale, structure and trends in the area of innovation funding in Ukraine.