In 2020, Ukraine’s export of IT services exceeded $5 billion a year for the first time, as well as exports of transport services and mineral products.
This is according to the NBU data on external accounts and foreign trade, given in the presentation of the Better Regulation Delivery Office (BRDO).
According to the NBU, Ukraine’s total exports decreased by 4.6% in 2020. Both exports of goods and services also decreased.
At the same time, IT industry exports increased by $853 million, or more than 20% per year. Thus, the share of computer services in total exports reached 8.3%.
It should be noted that despite the pandemic, the IT industry demonstrates positive impacts on the Ukrainian economy. However, the possibility of further increasing Ukraine’s exports of IT services will depend on the growing number of IT specialists in the labor market. By the way, low rates of training of IT specialists by Ukrainian higher education institutions were analyzed by BRDO experts in the study “Analysis of IT education in Ukrainian universities”.
“Despite the challenging year, IT exports increased significantly. The long-term growth in exports of IT services requires to focus on human capital development. It should be addressed both through education (training of new specialists) and through immigration (attracting foreigners),” Ihor Samokhodsky, ICT Sector Head at BRDO, said.
Since 2020, foreigners have gained access to the immigration mechanism, but some issues still need to be improved.
Also, foreigners can be single tax payers without having a residence permit, and from October 2020, they do not need to make an “extra departure” from Ukraine to obtain a temporary residence permit in Ukraine.
You can see the NBU data at https://bank.gov.ua/ua/statistic/sector-external/data-sector-external#1