Republic of Cyprus Second Voluntary National Report - Sustainable development goals

75 INDUSTRY, INNOVATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE SDG 9 | Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation, and foster innovation Highlights – 2020 • The newly established Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy is responsible for enabling and acceler- ating Cyprus’ digital transformation and innovation. • Cyprus ismaking notable progress in its development towards a knowledge-based economyand digital technology, marking the highest improvement towards the SDG implementation, moving fromthe low39.64% in 2017 to 72 % in 2020 implementation overall. • Six Centres of Excellence in Research & Innovation have secured a total of €90 million under the relevant EU framework “Horizon 2020”. • Α New Industrial Strategy Policy of Cyprus has been adopted in 2019, geared towards innovation, digitalisation, and cyclical economy. • Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMP) have been developed for two major cities, promoting a holistic policy towards sustainable transport. Covid Response • New electronic services have been developed to accommodate the constant and urgent needs of the pandemic, including the operation of the CYFlightpass, the call centre, the vaccination platform, the use of sms texts to approve exceptional movements, and the development of the official application “CovTracer - Exposure Notification (CovTracer-EN)” to detect possible contacts of confirmed cases. • Digitalising services has enabled the adoption of teleworking in both the public, and the private sectors, including tele-schooling. Looking Ahead • Out of the Resilience and Recovery Programme €282 million will be allocated towards Digitalisation and €64 million for Research and Innovation for the period 2021-2026. • The national target for R&D expenditures as a percentage of GDP has been set to reach 1.50% by the year 2023. EU RANK TREND R&D AND INNOVATION Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D (All Sectors) 25 Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D (Business Enterprise Sector) 26 Gross Domestic Expenditure on R&D (Government Sector) 25 Human Resources in Science and Technology 10 R&D Personnel (All Sectors) 26 Employment in High and Medium-High Technology Manufacturing and Knowledge-Intensive Services 21 Patent Applications to the European Patent Office 14 SUSTAINABLE TRANSPORT Average CO 2 Emissions Per Km from New Passenger Cars 17 Note: Data comes from the Statistical Service of Cyprus. EU rank presents the rank of Cyprus among the EU member states, for the most recent available year. Trend presents the 10-year trend from 2010-2019. Pos, Neg, Neg-Pos, and, Pos-Neg indicate a positive, a negative, a U-shape and an inverse U-shape trend, respectively. Green arrows indicate an improvement in the performance of Cyprus and red arrows indicate a decline in the performance of Cyprus. indicates a constant trend. : indicates that the trend is not calculated, because less than 8 years of data are available.