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IT sector’s contribution to Russian GDP almost reaches 2% in 2023 — research

According to data provided, the positive trend of development of the IT sector persisted from 2019 to 2023, including during the pandemic 2020 and in 2022-2023, despite a sharp reduction of supply of imported technological solutions

MOSCOW, April 15. /TASS/. Russia’s IT sector grew faster than the economy overall in 2019-2023, with its contribution to the country’s GDP having reached almost 2% in 2023, according to research of the sector for 2019-2023 by the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University).

"The IT sector grew faster than the economy overall. As a result, its contribution to GDP reached almost 2% in 2023 (compared to 1.3% in 2019)," the research said.

According to data provided, the positive trend of development of the IT sector persisted from 2019 to 2023, including during the pandemic 2020 and in 2022-2023, despite a sharp reduction of supply of imported technological solutions. Moreover, figures indicating real volumes of developments and sales of IT solutions and services in the sector grew at double-digit rates, according to experts. In particular, the average annual growth rate of gross added value in comparable prices exceeded 10%, the number of employees grew by 11% on average per annum, while in four years the growth on both indicators reached around 1.5 times. "Even by the end of 2022 the sector managed not only to maintain, but also to boost staff number, while by December 2023 it reached record 857,000 employees," authors of research noted.

In turn, sales of own products and services in the IT sector grew by 26% on average per annum and amounted to 3.1 trillion rubles ($33.3 bln) in 2023. Moreover, IT companies boosted fixed investment, especially over the past two years, while among the key factors were accelerated development of import substituting canned software, expansion of IT infrastructure of Russian cloud services, as well as a surge of demand for computing capacities, according to research.

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