The president of the Uruguayan Chamber of Information Technology, Leonardo Loureiro, participated in an interview on Telemundo with Emiliano Cotelo.
Information technologies in Uruguay
Information technologies provide software for production tasks. In Uruguay, according to Loureiro, there are several companies dedicated to providing software in areas such as banking, social network analysis and artificial intelligence.
This week saw the release of data on information technologies updated to 2016.
"More than 350 companies are members of the chamber, from more than 52 markets to which we export. As a sector we represent 2.2% of the GDP in economic activity," Loureiro said.
The export of technologies
According to the engineer, exports in this sector in 2016 grew by 10 % compared to the previous year and by almost 3 % between the national and international accumulated figures.
"In the domestic market we had a small retraction, which we have analysed for the private sector," he said.
From 2000 to 2016, the sector has shown the following signs of growth:
To describe the impact that the services sector has on foreign trade, Loureiro chose to compare it to trade in goods:
"Compared to the export of goods, we are quite close to what the export of rice was in 2016. If we compare ourselves with the turnover, that is about 1,152 million dollars, we would be equivalent to the entire production of the country's cellulose complex".
Loureiro noted that Japan is an established buyer of the sector's services, and described the quantity as follows:
"The export of software alone is more than all the goods put together. In other words, if we take everything we sell today of traditional products, we sell more technology than that.
In terms of the main markets importing technology services, the United States is the top market, accounting for more than half of the total. "It shows that we have highly appreciated technology," said Loureiro.
The Cuti president said that the 58 % reflects that "people's productivity has increased quite a lot" and that this is because they are working for "the most demanding markets".
"About eight years ago we were the largest net exporters of information technologies," Loureiro recalled, adding that on a per capita level, Uruguay is higher than countries such as Argentina and Brazil.
He described the sector as showing signs of growth:
"We have seen that many of the companies are preparing to go to demanding markets and are taking stronger decisions such as opening offices and hiring staff in the United States, Japan, Brazil or Mexico.
He added that companies are making investment decisions to do business development and marketing.
Some 12,200 people work in information technology. This figure comes from CUTI member companies, meaning that there are actually more people involved in the sector, according to Loureiro. If the communications sector - which would make up ICTs - is taken into account, the number of staff in the sector exceeds 22,000.
The information technology workforce
Regarding the profile of people working in information technology, Loureiro pointed out that it is not only workers related to engineering who are employed, but also "accountants, economists, other engineers, doctors" working in the area.
"We are finding accountants implementing artificial intelligence bots," he said.
In terms of age, 50 % of the staff are between 25 and 34 years old. "If we add those under 25, we have 65 % of the staff under 34," he said.
Loureiro said that there is "negative" unemployment in the sector, because it cannot take on projects because it does not have the people to carry them out. He pointed out that the lack of manpower in this sector is a phenomenon that occurs in several countries around the world and highlighted the agreement that the company Cisco established with the government to offer courses at UTU.
"This project is for UTU to train between 1,200 and 1,500 people in these technologies," he said.
The proportion of women in the sector is low compared to other sectors.
"This is a worrying issue for technology. Out of 316 graduates in 2016, only 20% are women," said Loureiro, who pointed out that there have been improvements so that a third of the workforce in the sector is female.
"There is no doubt that women should find this sector much more attractive," said the Cuti president, who said that more women promise more diversity, creativity and innovation.
Source: Telemundo
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