What we've seen hurting companies across the board in manufacturing, as I said in my introduction, are the cuts to the research and development tax credit.
In 2013-14 the tax credit went down from 20% to 15% for large corporations and the capital expenditure was eliminated from the eligibility criteria. As you know, innovation in manufacturing is not the same as it is in other sectors, such as software or services. It's very capital intensive. What we're lacking now is a good incentive for capital expenditures, either for R and D or for automation, because our productivity is lagging.
The second point I want to make is we need to start looking at productivity as a long-term solution to our demographics problem. That goes to skills, but it also goes to capital expenditure. Automation in industrial robotics is coming. We heard about it in a lot of discussion at Davos. It's not a do it or don't. It's a do it or die.
We need a strategy to improve productivity in all sectors, including manufacturing.