Chairman of ICTA Supervisory Board, Tornike Sulaberidze, explains why the income of the IT sector decreased in the first quarter of 2024. According to him, the main reason is the relocation of migrants who arrived in Georgia in 2022, after the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.
According to the NBG, in the first quarter, the foreign income of the IT sector amounted to USD 147.6 million, which was 27% less compared to the same period of the previous year.
"The drop in income is certainly unfortunate, but it happened for certain reasons. In 2022, foreign companies began to relocate [to Georgia], which reached a peak in 2023, and today many of them leave Georgia. There are several reasons for this:
The main reason is the difficulty of obtaining the right of residence. That is why there are IT visas in various countries, including European ones, which attract talent. We are losing specialists every day, in the first quarter more than 1000 IT specialists left Georgia, which is very sad. We have to do everything to attract and keep the talent in the country," Tornike Sulaberidze says.
By the end of 2021, 30,600 people were employed in the information and communications sector, and by the end of 2023 this number had reached 47,000. In the first quarter of 2024, the number of employees in the mentioned sector decreased to 46,300.
