The volume of computer services in January-September 2022 increased by 13% and amounted to almost $5.5 billion, the IT Ukraine Association (ITU) reported, citing data from the National Bank of Ukraine.
“According to the results of nine months of this year, the national IT industry maintains a positive growth trend and remains the only export industry that consistently generates foreign exchange earnings in the Ukrainian economy during the war. Ukrainian companies continue to work continuously and complete projects, pay taxes on time, attract investments and new customers , to actively enter the global market,” the message on the association’s website emphasizes.
According to the NBU, in the first nine months of 2022, the volume of computer services increased by 13%, to almost $5.5 billion. At the same time, the amount of taxes and fees paid by the IT industry for this period amounted to UAH 48 billion.
The Association emphasized that the Ukrainian IT business is doing everything possible to ensure maximum readiness for any scenario of events in Ukraine due to the full-scale war unleashed by the Russian Federation.
“Companies are constantly adapting their infrastructure to wartime realities: key systems are brought into the cloud, the network of Internet providers is diversified, including through the Starlink global satellite system, office premises are equipped with generators to provide backup power supply,” the ITU explained.
According to the association, up to 15% of IT specialists are also involved in the Cybertroops, and 3% of IT specialists defend the country with weapons in their hands. The remaining 82% work further in companies that support the economic front of the state, actively donate and volunteer. According to ITU estimates, the total amount of donations from the Ukrainian technology sector has already exceeded $500 million.
At the same time, the report indicates that, compared with previous years, the growth rate of the industry has slowed down and does not correspond to pre-war forecasts for 2022. In order to preserve and further develop the industry in the country, it is important to resolve at the state level a number of issues important for the industry related to personnel in the context of martial law.
“In addition to the objective reasons for this trend related to the war, it is critically important to resolve the issue of booking IT specialists, allow them to temporarily travel abroad to support business activities and work with clients, maintain Ukrainian tax residency of companies and specialists,” the executive director of the association emphasized. Konstantin Vasyuk.
According to him, state support in resolving these issues is of key importance.
The export IT industry in January-May 2022 provided foreign exchange earnings to the Ukrainian economy in the amount of $3.2 billion, the IT Ukraine Association reported.
“During the three war months – March-May – the volume of exports of computer services increased by 6% compared to the same period of the previous year. In the first five months of 2022, the export IT industry provided foreign exchange earnings to the Ukrainian economy in the amount of $ 3.2 billion. On June 1, 2022, IT companies and individual entrepreneurs working in the IT industry transferred taxes and fees in the amount of about UAH 30 billion,” the association’s website said on Thursday.
According to the ITU, among other things, the stable operation of the industry allowed the IT sector to allocate more than UAH 1 billion for humanitarian purposes and support for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
“At the same time, the IT industry is fighting on several fronts. 3% of professionals serve in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, approximately 12-15% are involved in the cyber front,” the association notes.
As reported, IT Ukraine notes the high resilience of the Ukrainian IT market in the conditions of the active phase of hostilities: during the war, 77% of IT companies attracted new customers, more than half of the companies plan to grow by 5-30% in 2022.
IT Ukraine is the largest association of IT companies, uniting 118 members and more than 80 thousand IT specialists.
Until 2030, Ukraine will increase the harvest and production of the main types of agricultural raw materials, which will allow the country to consolidate the status of a constantly growing producer and exporter of grains, oilseeds and sunflower oil, while a reduction is expected in production of sugar, milk and beef, the Ukrainian Agriculture Export Association (UAEA) reported.
As the UAEA told Interfax-Ukraine on Friday, the relevant data are contained in a joint report by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which compares the average annual production of the main types of agricultural products for 2018-2022 with projections in 2030.
Thus, the growth of the corn crop in Ukraine is projected from 33.99 million tonnes to 44.01 million tonnes (29.4% more), wheat – from 26.01 million tonnes to 35.86 million tonnes (37.8% more), and oilseeds – from 22.04 million tonnes to 26.29 million tonnes (19.3% more).
During the specified period, an increase in production of vegetable oil is also expected from 6.88 million tonnes to 8.4 million tonnes (22.1% more), poultry meat – from 1.15 million tonnes to 1.54 million tonnes (33.9% more), pork – from 0.71 million tonnes to 0.82 million tonnes (15.5% more), and fish and seafood – from 99,000 tonnes to 101,000 tonnes (2% more).
At the same time, Ukraine is projected to reduce milk production from 9.82 million tonnes to 8.93 million tonnes (9.1% less), sugar – from 1.38 million tonnes to 1.24 million tonnes (10.1% less) and beef – from 0.37 million tonnes to 0.33 million tonnes (10.8% less).
“The current forecasts of international organizations almost always consider Ukraine as a constantly growing producer and exporter of grains, oilseeds and sunflower oil, that is, our status as a supplier of raw materials to the world market will be strengthened,” the association summed up.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky is convinced that Ukraine should be associated not only with agriculture, mines and metallurgy, beautiful people, nature and food, but also with the IT industry. “There has always been a vision for everyone in the world that Ukraine is, above all, agriculture, mines, metallurgists, and tourists have always said that Ukraine is very beautiful, food here is very tasty and people are very beautiful, especially women. Yes, that’s it and it remains our brand, but there are other figures that indicate that the IT industry, IT technologies and companies are developing very quickly in Ukraine,” he said during a visit to Station F, the world’s largest startup campus, in Paris.
According to Zelensky, more than 4% of Ukraine’s GDP is now formed through the IT industry. “We have about 150,000 IT specialists, startup initiators in Ukraine. I think that we will develop in this direction,” he said.
Zelensky noted that in Ukraine there is no such campus for startups yet, but they will work on it. “We have a lot of factories, which, unfortunately, do not work. We will definitely find such a large building,” he said.
The share of IT industry of the Ukrainian economy is 4% of GDP, First Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Economic Development and Trade Stepan Kubiv has said.
“Today, the IT sector is 4% of GDP, 150,000 employees with high wages, who form the middle class. In a year and a half they will already be 200,000,” he said at a government meeting on Wednesday.
Kubiv also said that the government intends to support investments in innovations in such areas as the agricultural and industrial complex, the IT industry, aircraft manufacturing, tourism, infrastructure and other sectors.
“Together with the National Bank, we must form the best prerequisites for creating financial projects that will create new high-paying jobs,” Kubiv said.
The UNIT.City innovation park (Kyiv) and Western NIS Enterprise Fund (WNISEF) have presented the detailed overview of the key elements of Ukrainian IT industry, according to which a total of 184,700 designers worked in 4,000 IT companies in Ukraine in 2018. According to the data of the App Annie research company, every fifth global company working in the field of software development for mobile platforms has an office in Ukraine, according to the overview.
According to the study of The State of European Tech 2018, Ukraine has almost 184,700 IT designers. According to the report, last year Ukrainian startups managed to attract more than $290 million of investments.
“Over the past five years, the growth pace of the Ukrainian IT industry is calculated in double digits. Every fifth Fortune 500 company uses Ukrainian IT services. Therefore, today is the best time to open or expand own innovative business here. This guide will help international partners know this to be true,” UNIT.City CEO and Managing Partner Max Yakover said.
According to the overview, the IT industry is second in Ukraine in terms of exports in 2018, while in the world Ukraine ranks 24th among the most attractive countries for software development, and in accordance with the Global Innovation Index Ukraine ranked 54th out of 126 states.
“It is necessary that international partners have as much information as possible and have access to breakthrough local startups and entrepreneurs. The technology sector is of strategic importance for the Ukrainian economy and can change how Ukraine is perceived in the world during the digital transformation,” WNISEF President and CEO Jaroslawa Z. Johnson said.
The review also indicates that there are more than 110 research and development and design centers of companies located in Ukraine. The largest R & D partner of Ukraine is the United States (45% of companies), followed by the EU and Israel. The areas of expertise of Ukrainian R & D centers cover games, e-commerce, work with BigData and artificial intelligence, telecommunications, the Internet of Things, software development and other areas.
More than half of the R & D centers are located in Kyiv, and the major research centers are also Dnipro, Lviv, Kharkiv, Odesa and Vinnytsia.
As reported, the UNIT.City innovation park of businessman Vasyl Khmelnytsky officially opened in April 2017 on the territory of the former Kyiv Motorcycle Plant. On its territory there are co-working space Chasopys-UNIT, UNIT Factory IT school, three laboratories, a business campus, a foundation and five accelerators.
