Mishustin announced an increase in the share of the IT sector in the Russian economy

The information technology (IT) industry remains one of the fastest growing in the Russian economy, with its share of GDP doubling in six years. This was stated on May 18 by Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, speaking at the plenary session of the XI conference "Digital Industry of Industrial Russia" in Nizhny Novgorod.

"The information technology industry remains one of the fastest growing in our economy... In six years, its share in the country's GDP structure has doubled," Mishustin said.

At the same time, he stressed the need to be proactive — not just to create analogues of bygone Western products, but to predict changes in the market and form the foundation for long-term technological leadership.

"Today, cloud services and artificial intelligence are coming to many enterprises and are proving their effectiveness. And when we talk about the further development of the information technology sector and our industry as a whole, we need to take this into account. And be proactive. It's not just creating product analogues to meet the needs of organizations, but also predicting changes," Mishustin said.

To stimulate the introduction of domestic software, the government has launched mechanisms that make its acquisition financially profitable for businesses: expenses for Russian software can be included in the tax return at a double coefficient, and accelerated depreciation of software and hardware and software complexes is applied. Industrial competence centers have played an important role in the development of the industry, bringing together leading companies and developers. The work resulted in hundreds of implemented industrial production and logistics management systems.

The Prime Minister also said that today over 1 million people work in the Russian IT industry.

Study and work: IT companies will allocate 3% for education programs

The funds saved on benefits were proposed to be used for the development of the information technology market

Mishustin announced on April 9 that the Russian government would allocate 10 billion rubles to 84 regions for the development of information technology in the healthcare sector. It is specified that the financing will expand the possibilities of services on the Gosuslugi portal, including making an appointment with a doctor, calling a specialist at home, taking sick leave and receiving electronic prescriptions.