Bit Alliance Director Damir Maglajlic stated in an interview that the cuts in the IT sector at the global level did not have a significant impact on domestic IT companies.
He added that the mentioned cuts refer mainly to the world’s largest technology companies such as Twitter, Meta, and Google, which in the last few months have reduced the number of employees, each for their own reasons, but mainly due to cost reduction and changes in business policies.
Moreover, Maglajlic emphasized that it should be borne in mind that these companies significantly increased their number of workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“IT as a sector has been in constant expansion in recent decades, and there is a great demand for expert IT personnel all over the world, so I also believe that former employees of the aforementioned global technological giants will not have a problem finding employment in other companies,” stated Maglajlic.
Furthermore, he pointed out that in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), as well as in the rest of the world, there is a constant demand for IT personnel, and he has not yet heard of a surplus of such personnel.
“The lack of qualified labor is our biggest problem. Educational institutions in BiH do not produce a sufficient number of qualified workers, and reform is really needed in this segment. It is necessary to establish a modern faculty for information technology, first at the University of Sarajevo (UNSA), and then at other public universities, and it is also necessary to establish vocationally focused IT secondary schools, and to carry out a serious reform in primary and secondary education,” Maglajlic believes.
In addition to having difficulty finding new staff, Maglajlic states that they also have a big problem in retaining the existing ones in BiH, given the fact that the state does not have any proactive approach to the industry, which has been declared an industry of strategic importance.
He explained that most BiH companies are export-oriented and, he says, as far as he knows, there have been no serious declines or cancellations of orders.
“As I said, the global IT sector has been in constant expansion in recent decades and has recorded an average growth of 8 to 10 percent, which few other industries can boast of. In some states that make efforts and adopt certain measures for its accelerated development, this growth is significantly higher,” said Maglajlic.
He added that they still do not have exact data for 2022, but according to certain analyzes carried out by the domestic IT sector, it has continued its strong growth.
“In any case, there was a significant increase in income, as well as the number of employees, and this sector now represents a very significant segment of the domestic economy, especially due to the fact that it is primarily export-oriented. We estimate that the income at the level of the sector reached one billion BAM at the level of BiH, of which it was close to 700 million BAM in Canton Sarajevo (CS) alone,” Maglajlic concluded, Akta reports.
