In the next ten years, the creative industry will have clear and stable rules of the game. The Prime Minister of Ukraine Oleksiy Honcharuk announced that during a Government Meeting with the export IT industry facilitated by the BRDO Office.
“Our Government is committed to create the most comfortable environment for the IT industry to ensure its even more and faster growth. One of the problems hindering the IT industry development today is a lack of personnel. The industry is growing by 25-30 thousand specialists each year, while universities provide only 16 thousand students. That is why we are initiating the creation of the IT Creative Fund as a human capital development fund designed to train new qualified specialists for the industry,” Oleksiy Honcharuk said.
He explained that the money from this Fund would be used to finance three area: creation of new campuses and courses for IT specialists, funding of scholarships for students of Ukrainian universities and grants for young scientists.
The Prime Minister also added that the IT Creative Fund would be created with the participation of international organizations, IT industry and government representatives. “I believe that it is the industry representatives who should be engaged in the Fund activity. Business owners can work together, agree among themselves regarding the rules, appoint the management and run the Fund on their own. And the Government will assist you in this,” the Head of Government explained.
The IT Creative Fund will be funded by a special levy that will grow from 1% in 2020 to 5% in 2024. The Fund is expected to be operational in 2020, and its budget will amount to 0.5 billion hryvnias and will continue to increase.
The Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO) has been working on the creation of this Fund and the development of its model together with industry representatives for a long time. A relevant law has already been drafted and will be submitted to the Parliament in the near future.
“We and industry representatives have already discussed aspects of the Fund’s implementation in detail and continue this work to make it as effective and efficient as possible for stimulating the industry. Thanks to the support of the Government, we will be able to introduce changes as soon as possible,” Ihor Samokhodskyi, IT&Telecom sector head at BRDO, said.
The new option is voluntary while allowing the IT industry to ensure the stable predictable work of companies and the possibility of long-term planning as well as prevent speculation about disguised labor relations. For example, the risk that the relations will be reclassified as the labor ones is eliminated by law for companies operating under such conditions.
