NEW DELHI: India's gross research spending has consistently been increasing over the years but the country's total expenditure on R&D continues to be less than 1 per cent of its gross domestic product ( GDP ) when other emerging economies, including China and Brazil, invest more money on this head.The latest study of the National Science and Technology Management Information System (NSTMIS) under department of science and technology (DST) shows that the country's gross expenditure on R&D has, in fact, tripled in a decade - from Rs 24,117.24 crore in 2004-05 to Rs 85,326.10 crores in 2014-15 - with the government chipping in with more money as compared to private sector industries.But, the country's R&D expenditure as percentage of its GDP declined during the period. It has, in fact, been showing a consistent decline since 2008-09.The study shows that the central government's share in the gross expenditure was accounted for 45.1 per cent followed by private sector industries (38.1 per cent), state governments (7.4 per cent), higher education sector (3.9 per cent) and the public sector industries (5.5 per cent).NSTMIS compared the pattern of expenditure in 14 countries, including South Korea, Japan, USA, Russia, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, UK, Mexico and China, and found that India topped the list in terms of share of government sector spending. In other countries, private sector industries and institutions of higher education spent more than the government."India tops in government spending in R&D with 81.3 per cent (of the government sector expenditure) coming from eight major scientific agencies - defence, space, atomic energy, ICAR, CSIR, DST, (Department of) Biotechnology and ICMR - during 2014-15", tweeted the Union science and technology minister Harsh Vardhan while referring to the findings.The study noted that the public sector R&D was led by defence industries and fuels while private sector one was dominated by drugs, pharmaceutical and transportation during 2014-15.Though the study restricted its analysis of India's R&D expenditure till 2014-15, it estimated the country's expenditure on this head for the year 2015-16 at Rs 94,516.45 crore and for 2016-17 at Rs 1,04,864.03 crore which would also still account for less than 1 per cent of the country's GDP.As compared to India, other BRICS nations - Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa - had spent more of their GDP on research. Most of the developed countries, in fact, spent more than 2 per cent of their GDP on R&D.On scientific publication, India has shown a rising trend during the last decade. The report noted that the country's share in global research publications increased from 2.2 per cent in 2000 to 3.7 per cent in 2013.