Charted: Global innovation budgets

Governments in the region - and across the world - are looking for cutting-edge solutions to today’s biggest challenges.

Singapore is working on Quantum Encryption; Korea is building Artificial Intelligence robots; the UK is studying Genomics. GovInsider has charted how much countries and their governments are spending on research (as a percentage of their GDP).

Japan and Korea are spending is the highest in the region, while Singapore’s is higher than the United Kingdom's.

And how much of this comes from the government? Singapore is ahead of all the countries we look at, with public sector research spending making up 1% of its GDP.

Last month, it announced an innovation budget of US$13 billion for the next five years.

Note on data: Latest available public data has been used. * Data from 2013; ** Data from 2012; ^ Data from 2015; All other data is from 2014 Sources: Governments, The World Bank and OECD.