The information technology sector in Serbia has been recording better results in recent years and has an increasingly important role in the domestic economy.
From year to year, the number of companies, the number of employees, and exports are growing. Last year, despite the fact that exports grew significantly less than in the years before the coronavirus pandemic, a growth of four percent was recorded, and the growth continued this year as well. For half a year, it was clear that the results in this industry will be good, because in July, Serbia had a record export of information and communication technology services of 171 million euros, which is 56 percent more than in the same period in 2020 and 35 percent more than in July 2019, and when compared to July 2016, exports are three times higher.
Prime Minister Ana Brnabic recently pointed out that the IT sector is an important segment of the domestic economy, pointing out that the analysis of the National Bank of Serbia for the information and communication technologies sector by the end of October showed that the value of exports was as much as 1.4 billion euros.
– That is, practically, the value of the export of our minds, and that means that our innovators have created something that has been exported to the world in such a value – said Ana Brnabić. – The ICT sector is the largest net export branch because it has surpassed agriculture in the amount of exports, and it has a larger share in GDP than, say, construction.
The Prime Minister also pointed out that from 2008 to 2021, exports and the surplus in the field of information technologies have changed significantly.
– Exports in 2008 were 178 million euros, and we did not have a surplus, we already had a deficit – we imported more intelligence than we exported. By the end of this year, the amount of our exports will be close to two billion euros, and the surplus in the first 10 months is almost a billion and a half euros.
Currently, there are about 2,500 IT companies operating in Serbia, and among them there are about 400 in Novi Sad, most of which are small and micro companies, with up to 10 employees, while there are several dozen really large companies. This sector, not counting experts working in the public sector, banking, insurance employs more than 40,000 people, which is significantly more than five years ago, when the programming sector employed 19,000 people, Dnevnik reports.
