A restructuring information and communication technologies market

Tamás Laufer, president of the Hungarian Association of IT Companies (IVSZ) told: In just 5 years the direct and indirect gross value added (GVA) of the information and communication technologies (ICT) market grew by more than 20 percent to HUF 6,000 billion. This means that the digital economy’s contribution to the Hungarian economy’s GVA is now minimum 20 percent.

Tamás Laufer
president
Hungarian Association
of IT Companies

Mr Laufer explained that the digital development projects realised by ICT firms are insourcing-based. This means that although the digital economy is expanding, the ICT sector has fewer orders and the workforce problem worsens too. Industry 4.0, artificial intelligence, IoT and cloud computing have an ever-greater impact on the ICT industry. The majority of small and medium-sized ICT businesses were unable to acquire considerable funding from the Economic Development and Innovation Operative Programme (GINOP), and it were mainly the large-scale projects with a university background that received money from domestic R&D development budgets.

In the light of the economic recession forecasted by certain experts, the president talked about the importance of companies adopting technologies that can increase their efficiency and cut costs, e.g. industrial digitalisation, artificial intelligence, cloud computing. One of the biggest challenges ahead of the ICT sector is the likeliness of businesses becoming digital enterprises, thanks to the comprehensive digitalisation process, which would mean smaller demand for the solutions and products developed by the ICT firms. //