Petersburg IT exports underestimated by a large amount

A study entitled “Petersburg Export 2016-2017” showed that the IT sector is significantly superior to other industries in real contribution to exports from the Northern Capital. But finding such an “inequality” was not so simple: the results of the IT industry are not fully reflected in the official government statistics.

It does not account for about 25% of exports of products manufactured in St. Petersburg.

If oil and oil products, grain, roundwood and a number of other goods, which are practically not produced in St. Petersburg, are deducted from the total volume of exports passing through St. Petersburg customs ($ 14.09 billion), then real exports will be about $ 4.9 billion.

Data for 11 months of 2016 leads the Federal Customs Service. Data for the whole year will appear in March.
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According to Elena Tkachenko, a professor at the Department of Economics and Enterprise Management at St. Petersburg State Economic University, the export of IT and other intellectual innovative products is not directly tracked by customs due to the lack of appropriate customs codes.

According to the data of the Russian Export Center, the category of “unclassified” is the second in terms of export growth rates (mainly to the UK, Estonia and the USA) among monetary value goods, the RBC newspaper writes . Exports of goods of this category grew in 2016 (over 11 months) by 49%.

According to Smolny, the Committee on Industrial Policy and Innovations (KPPPI), St. Petersburg accounts for half of all Russian software exports - $ 3.5 billion of $ 7 billion. However, according to specialists of Russoft, based on data from market participants, the volume of St. Petersburg IT exports for 11 months of 2016 was about $ 1.6 billion, and its growth rate compared to 2015 was 15%.

The share of exports in the total volume of St. Petersburg IT products was higher than in other regions of Russia. Russoft estimates it at 60%.

Nevertheless, IT is the absolute export leader in St. Petersburg, although official statistics, according to experts at Russoft, account for no more than 10% of the output of this sector exported from Russia.

The real volume of exports of products of St. Petersburg companies for 11 months of 2016 amounted to about $ 6.5 billion - almost $ 1.5 billion more than according to official data.

Petersburg is ahead of the national indicators in terms of the development of the IT industry by an average of 20%. And this situation persists for the last 10 years. This was announced in November 2016, at a round table on the development of IT-sphere. At the round table, they also noted that IT exports may soon overtake armaments exports.