After ten years of EU membership software business in Bulgaria is the best performing sector of the IT industry in this country. This is what data by independent consulting company CBN Pannoff, Stoytcheff& Co. show. The company has been analysing ICT markets and businesses in the country for 26 years.

The facts speak for themselves: 4982 jobs in 2006 and 19,755 positions in the software business today or growth of nearly 300%. The software industry employs some of the most highly-skilled and well-paid professionals in Bulgaria. The annual survey of the Bulgarian Association of Software Companies (BASCOM) shows that the average wage in the sector is four times higher than the average for the country. However,employment growth in the sphere is too weak, which shows shortage of IT specialists. BASCOM say that companies usually need more than eight weeks to find the right people for their open positions. A positive trend is that the purchasing power of specialists working in the sector such as software developers and project managers is equal or even higher that of experts working in countries like the UK, for example.

Total incomes in the sphere in 2006 reached 139.4 million euro in comparison to 1 billion and 20 million euros for 2016 (over 600% growth).IT professionals are 85 percent of all employees in the industry. One third of them are women. Over 90% of jobs are occupied by young people under 35 years of age.

If the pace of revenue growth in the sector remained unchanged, in 2021 it would reach 4.5% of GDP, which would have ranked the IT industry among the largest ones in the country.

Ten years after the entry of Bulgaria into the European Unionthe software industry has established a firm place in the Bulgarian economy and continues its stable development.

English: Alexander Markov