According to the National Bank of Ukraine, the export of IT services showed an unprecedented drop both in volume and in the share of total exports.
Ukrainian IT trends
At the same time, in 2023, the IT industry will:
- It provided $6.7 billion inflow to the Ukrainian economy (by 8.5% or $622 million less than the figure for 2022).
- Decreased the share in the total export of services to 42% (less than the figure of 45.3% in 2022).
- It remained the largest among Ukrainian exporting industries.
The export of IT services fell to the level of 2021, when it amounted to $6.8 billion, and in 2020 – $5 billion. The growth in December by 8.3% ($611 million) compared to previous months is not indicative – the last month of the year, as well as the first of the next, are always characterized by the growth of financial indicators due to the finalization of projects. This is how the IT Ukraine Association comments on the results .
Reasons for the fall
Experts note that the fall in IT exports is probably related to two details:
- Difficulties of working on the international market due to the almost non-existent possibility of short-term work trips and Ukrainian “registration” of IT teams.
- An extremely low percentage of reserved IT specialists and a shortage of highly qualified personnel, most of whom are involved in military projects.
“Exports of IT services in 2023 showed a year-on-year decline for the first time. And this is already a noticeable tendency to decrease market volumes, because the share of the domestic year in the IT industry is insignificant. The drop in exports by almost 10% indicates that it is incredibly difficult for Ukrainian IT to maintain its existing positions, despite the efforts of the Ministry of Digital and all the promotion opportunities that we currently have,” says Maria Shevchuk, executive director of ITU.
According to her, the IT of Ukraine in wartime is an important part of the country’s economic base, so the industry needs urgent solutions to stop the decline and additional tools to stimulate its development and, accordingly, exports.
Other leaders do not lose ground
In the same period, the list of countries that received the largest export revenue in 2023 remained unchanged:
- USA ($2,677 million).
- Malta ($567 million).
- Great Britain ($535 million).
- Cyprus ($362 million).
- Israel ($293 million).
We will remind you that in 2022, IT turned out to be the only branch of the Ukrainian economy that maintained positive dynamics and showed growth of 5.8%.
Source: https://expert.com.ua/