The resilience of Ukraine’s IT industry amid the war last year, which struck observers, has just been confirmed by official data. While the country’s GDP fell by some 30%, IT service export reached a record $7.34 billion, up $400 million from 2021, according to central bank statistics cited by the IT Ukraine association.
“Such positive industry indicators didn’t surprise us as we saw businesses successfully implementing continuity measures amid the war and creating conditions for their employees to work safely,” said Kostiantyn Vasiuk, the association’s executive director.
Ukrainian IT companies have demonstrated their capacity to “overcome all obstacles, including blackouts and serious breaks in communications networks.”
The $7.34 billion is an all-time record, Vasiuk noted, while conceding a slow down in growth compared to the pre-war period.
IT businesses contributed 32.2 billion hryvnias (roughly $1 billion) to state coffers, up 16% from the previous year. The number of individual entrepreneurs who paid taxes also increased in 2022.
In summer last year, an IT Ukraine study showed that more than half (55%) of the IT companies had not move anywhere, switching to various degrees of remote work. A quarter (26%) mostly relocated within Ukraine with a minor part relocated abroad. One in five (19%) fully relocated within Ukraine, while not a single company among those surveyed had fully relocated outside Ukraine.
As of May 2022, according to another study conducted by Lviv IT Cluster in several key regions, 85% of companies said they had managed to completely or almost completely resume business activity, reaching or exceeding pre-Feb. 24 levels. Thirteen percent even reported an increase in income in the range of 25-50%.
Source: https://itukraine.org.ua/updated-data-it-industry-is-the-only-growing-export-industry-in-ukraine.html
