IT Spending in Romania To Rise 7.0%/Year Through 2013 - IDC

The survey, Aid to Recovery: The Economic Impact of IT, Software, and the Microsoft Ecosystem on the Global Economy, covered 52 countries worldwide.

IT-related activities will generate 1.1 billion lei in taxes in 2009. Over the next four years that means more than 1.7 billion lei in aggregate net new taxes, IDC said.

That spending growth means that employment in Romania's IT industry and of IT professionals in IT-using organisations will rise by 21,000 jobs from the end of 2009 to the end of 2013, up from a 2009 base of 44,000. That represents an annual growth of 7.4% through 2013, which is more than fifty times faster than the growth of total employment in the country of 21.5 million.

Software drives activity in the services and distribution sectors, as well as in IT-using organisations, which means that while spending on packaged software will be only 15% of total IT spending in 2009, 60% of IT employment will be software-related.

The IT market will drive the creation of more than 200 new businesses between now and the end of 2013. Most of these companies will be small and locally-owned organisations.

IT spending in central and eastern Europe (CEE) will total $46 billion (31.3 billion euro) in 2009. From the end of 2008 to the end of 2013, IT spending will grow by 5.8% a year across the region.

Besides Romania, the other CEE countries included in the survey are Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Russia, and Poland.

(1 euro=4.2675 Romanian lei)