CAIRO, Sept 15 (Aswat Masriya) - Egypt spends around $6.4 billion on research and development (R&D), equivalent to 0.7 per cent of its GDP, placing it among the countries with the least spending on R&D, according to the latest data published by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.

The number of researchers per million inhabitants in Egypt is 681, with male researchers accounting for 58 per cent of the lot.

The largest spending was allocated by the universities sector, followed by the government sector and then the business sector.

Egypt's figures stood in stark contrast to Israel's, which ranked second in R&D spending over the world after the Republic of Korea with 4.1 per cent of GDP spent on R&D.

In Israel, the number of researchers per million inhabitants reached 8,255, which is more than 12 times the proportion of Egyptian researchers to the number of its inhabitants.  

The largest allocation of R&D spending was directed by the business sector followed by universities then the government sector.

Global spending on R&D has reached a record high of almost US$ 1.7 trillion, with about 10 countries accounting for 80 per cent of spending.

Increasing spending on public and private R&D as well as the number of researchers is among the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set to be achieved over the next 15 years.

Both Egypt and Israel receive large amounts of aid from the United States, a significant portion of which is allocated towards the military.

Egypt receives $1.3 billion of military aid from the U.S. annually, which makes it the second largest recipient of U.S. aid after Israel.

The U.S. resumed its military aid in March 2015, after a temporary and partial suspension in the wake of the Egyptian military ouster of former President Mohamed Mursi, who hails from the Muslim Brotherhood, in July 2013. Mursi had faced mass protests against his rule.

According to World Bank statistics, Egypt's military expenditure amounted to 1.7 per cent of GDP in 2015, while Israel's military expenditure reached 5.4 per cent of GDP in the same year.