PSU Power equipment maker Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) plans to spend around Rs 500 crore on R&D during the current financial year. BHEL, in an official release stated that it has spent Rs 464.4 crore on R&D in 2007-08, which was 94.3 per cent higher compared to Rs 239 crore spent last year. This is the highest spending on R&D so far and is over two per cent of the company's total turnover of Rs 21,680 crore

Further, the company is looking at spending around Rs 900 crore on various R&D activities by 2011-12.

During the last financial year, BHEL filed 175 patents to take the total number of patents and copyrights to 664, besides setting up the Centre for Intelligent Machines and Robotics at Hyderabad.