Turkey’s ICT sector grows 36 percent last year

ISTANBUL

The size of Turkey’s information and communication technologies (ICT) market reached 266 billion Turkish Liras ($29.9 billion) in 2021, according to the Informatics Industry Association (TÜBİSAD).

The ICT industry grew by 36 percent last year from 2020, exceeding the initial growth forecast of 10 percent, showed the latest edition of the association’s annual report.

The market size of the sector was 189 billion liras in the previous year and the industry is forecast to grow around 10 percent in 2022, according to the report.

Changes in foreign exchange rates and the IT software contributed to the sector’s market growth with 19 billion liras and 18.5 billion liras, respectively.

The country’s ICT industry grew 23 percent annually on average between 2017 and 2011, the report said, noting that the highest expansion in this period was recorded last year.

The information technologies sector expanded 29 percent on average over the same period, while the communication technologies’ growth was 19 percent.

Last year, the share of the information technologies was 114.5 billion liras, or 29 percent, in the whole industry, while the communication technologies accounted for 120.1 billion liras of the overall size of the sector.

Within the information technologies sector, software and hardware categories captured the largest shares, with 51 billion liras and 43.5 billion liras, respectively. In the communications sector, the size of the electronic communications and equipment categories were 92.4 billion liras and 59.1 billion liras, respectively.

Back in 2017, the local ICT industry’s market size was 113.8 billion liras, rising to 152.9 billion liras in 2019.

Exports on rise

The report also showed that in terms of the origins of products, the weight of domestic products was the highest at 76 percent in the IT software category, followed by IT services at 69 percent.

The weight of domestic products was 26 percent in the IT hardware and 16 percent in the communication technologies equipment categories.

The ICT sector’s exports grew by 58 percent last year from 2020 to amount to 17.5 billion, according to the report.

IT software had the largest share in the industry’s total exports at 14.8 billion liras, followed by communications equipment at 1.02 billion liras.

Hardware and IT service exports last year stood at 1 billion liras and 619 million liras, respectively.

The number of techno parks (technology development zones) in Turkey increased from 87 in 2021 to 92 as of March 2022, with the number of companies operating in those zones rising by 23 percent from 6,267 to 7,707, according to the report.

Turnover generated by the techno parks grew by 149 percent this year compared with 2021 to 51.8 billion liras, and their export revenues increased by 73 percent to 13.3 billion liras.

More than 79,000 people were employed at techno parks as of March this year, up 23 percent from 2021.