ATIC

The third Moldova ICT Summit edition took place in Chisinau between 16 and 17 of May, bringing together about 1000 participants, among which officials from Government and ministries’ representatives, business leaders, academia people, opinion leaders, IT specialists. They assisted the presentations of over 85 speakers from over 20 countries around the world.

The second day of the Summit was marked by the Government Special Session “High level dialogueon the vision of the Strategy Digital Moldova 2020”, going to be finalized in accordance with the Digital Agenda from the European Union Strategy “Europe 2020”. The session was attended by the Prime Minister of Republic of Moldova, ministers and high level officials from abroad who discussed the presented vision.

Prime Minister of RM, Vlad Filat, called for cooperation between public and private sectors. He mentioned as necessary that the same vision will be shared by the Government, its development partners and business sector representatives, in order to efficiently use ICT tools for the country development.

The Ministry of Information and Communications Technology, Pavel Filip described Moldova in 2020 according to Strategy vision: “The ICT local companies are competitive at international level, ensuring a continuous growth of the country position in the knowledge based global economy. Research and innovation in a favourable environment boost the ICT sector expansion. It is ensured an universal access, inclusive and integrated for the use of entire spectrum of services electronically”. Therefore, “our general objective will be to create appropriate conditions for the growth and comprehensive use of the ICT potential by public institutions, business sector and citizens”.

The Strategy must be a signal for business sector representatives to invest in the field of information and communication technologies, according to the opinion of President of the Moldovan Association of ICT Companies (ATIC), Veaceslav Cunev. He mentioned that the entrepreneurs expect this to be a real Strategy which will establish the criteria and standards needed to be followed by the enterprises, in order to elaborate their action plans for the next period up to 2020. Also he declared that the business sector is ready to commit with a full responsibility in the elaboration of the strategy and it expects the same interest from the state side.

“Do IT in Moldova” – under this slogan was held the session designed for potential foreign investors, Moldova – your IT partner. Mark Yates, Research Analyst for Verticals and Government Insights CEE (USA), mentioned that the IT spending in Moldova will undergo a strong growth of an average of 6.6% annually of GDP to 2015. „Investing in egovernment and creation of could services platform are likely to jump over legacies” what concerns the Government of RM, considers Yates. „Moldova is a solid nearshoring destination. The combination of education, IT skills, location, and languages makes it ideally suited to organizations looking for a cost-effective alternative to West Europe and CEE region”, says Mark Yates.

During the Summit there were presented and discussed more relevant topics in the frame of the 5 parallel panels, such as Universal Service, ICT4Business, e-government, government performances through ICT, education and talent management, software as craft, etc. 

Moldova ICT Summit 2012 was organized by the Moldovan Association of ICT Companies (ATIC), the USAID Project Competitiveness Enhancement and Enterprise Development II (CEED II), the Centre for Electronic Government (eGov) and World Bank, under the patronage of Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies (MTIC). The partners of this year edition are the companies Tacit Knowledge, Moldcell, Microsoft. The sponsors of the event are the companies: DAAC System Integrator, IBM, HP, Endava, Intel, Moldtelecom, Asseco. General media-partner Publika TV, online partner Numbers, media partners Infotag, Profit, Economist, Unimedia, Кишиневский Обозреватель.

Briefing note: The first edition of the Moldova ICT Summit took place in 2010 this being an event of major importance for ICT sector where there are discussed the development visions for ICT field in Moldova, on the tendencies of the sector, as well as the industry challenges. The edition from year 2011 was attended by about 800 persons. There were done more than 50 presentations by representatives from 19 countries among which Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Estonia, Great Britain, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, USA, etc.

The ICT sector in Moldova is known as undergoing a stable dynamic development. According to a study of ATIC, the turnover of the IT companies members of ATIC was increased by 32,8% annually during the period 2005-2010, which equals an increase from 1.7 mln USD in 2005 to 7.4 mln USD in 2010. Software exports registered an annual growth rate of 49%. The number of newly registered companies increased from 376 in 2005 up to 1200 in 2010. A significant number of them are multinational companies which opened their outsourcing departments in Moldova. This increase is driven by cuts from state for IT companies what concerns taxes and income tax exemptions for employees of these companies. The fiscal facilities for the companies in the IT sector have been extended by the Government of Republic of Moldova for a next period of three years until 2015.