Turkey's research and development expenditures reached TL 38.5 billion last year, TL 8.6 billion more compared to 2017, the Turkish Statistical Agency (TurkStat) announced Wednesday.

TurkStat says the gross domestic expenditure on R&D was 0.96% of the gross domestic product in 2017 and rose to 1.03% in 2018.

Most of the expenditure was made in the financial and non-financial corporations and they were followed by higher education. The highest expenditure was in the capital Ankara and was followed by the country’s financial hub Istanbul.

Turkey seeks to increase the share of R&D expenditures in GDP to 1.8% a government minister announced in September.

Industry and Technology Minister Mustafa Varank has said that they would also raise human resources in the field to 300,000 and number of researchers to 200,000.

According to TurkStat, the number of full-time R&D personnel was over 172,000 last year.