One of the rare activities in which Bosnia and Herzegovina(BiH) achieves a surplus in exchange with the world is the IT (information technology) sector, as evidenced by the data according to which the value of the export of computer services exceeded half a billion BAM last year, while in the same period foreign experts sold only about 51 million BAM of its smart solutions to domestic market.
The Central Bank of BiH performs assessments of the import and export of services and their sub-components, among other things, for telecommunications, computer and information services as part of balance of payments assessments based on available source data.
”The value of the export of computer services in 2022 was 544.54 million BAM, and in 2021 it was 396.67 million BAM. When it comes to imports, BiH imported computer services worth 51.07 million BAM last year, and 47.84 million BAM in 2021,” the Central Bank of BiH pointed out that they do not have data on the specific type of services.
The Ministry of Scientific and Technological Development, Higher Education and Information Society of the Republika Srpska (RS) says that, when it comes to exports, the IT sector is the fastest-growing industry in the RS.
”The fastest rate of export growth is precisely in the field of IT services, although the value of exports in that branch is not the highest because other sectors achieve higher export values. Unfortunately, the IT sector is insufficiently developed in BiH, but there is a significant potential for the development of that industry on overall economic growth. Research shows that the increase in allocations for the IT industry leads to a GDP growth of two percent,” said Assistant Minister for Information Society Denis Turkanovic and added that the further development of the IT sector requires greater investment in human resources.
”Our market already lacks quality, professional workers, and the salaries of senior programmers go up to five or six thousand BAM. There are a lot of trained workers and whoever has an affinity can become solid in this business in a year, with the fact that technologies advance so quickly and that, if they do not further improve and learn independently, they cannot achieve much,” mentioned Sasa Matic, co-owner and technical director of the Banja Luka company ‘East Code‘ and added that excellent knowledge of the English language and skillful computer work are the basic qualifications that IT specialists must have, Biznis Info reports.
