The Director of the Foreign Investment Promotion Agency of BiH (FIPA) Gordan Milinić participated at the 14th Vienna Economic Forum, which took place on 6 November 2017 in Vienna.
In the framework of the session entitled
"We live in a digital time! Visions and Investor's Responsibilities"
the director Milinić spoke about the development of the software industry in
Bosnia and Herzegovina and the growing interest of foreign investors in the ICT
sector of BiH. It is about an activity for which there is the highest demand in
the world market and has a trend of long-term continuous growth.
According to the preliminary analysis of the
Bit Alliance association which gathers BH software companies, the annual
revenue per software engineer is between 80,000 and 120,000 BAM. By educating
1,000 new software engineers, BiH could earn, primarily from exports, more than
90 million BAM per year. According to estimations, there are currently between
2,500 and 3,500 software engineers in BiH.
The Director Milinić emphasized that the ICT
sector is recognized as a horizontal industry that has the strength to use its
technology solutions to strengthen the competitiveness of all other sectors and
thus lead to greater economic growth. He also conducted a series of talks with
the representatives of the present companies and invited them to take advantage
of the opportunities for profitable business that BiH offers to foreign
investors.
The Forum was attended by prime ministers, vice
-premiers and ministers of the economies and development of most of the
countries of South-eastern Europe and representatives of large European
companies, including Telekom Austria Group, Microsoft Austria, BouygueS Europe
SA Belgium, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP Austria, Verbund AG, Sopharma
PLC Bulgaria, DG CONNECT, Jackovich International LLC, AME International GmbH
Austria, LANSKY GANZGER + partner Austria, Flughafen Wien AG Austria, DenizBank
Financial Services Group, Raiffeisen Bank International AG etc.
Mr. Milinić attended the Forum as a member of
the Committee of Presidents of the Foreign Investment Promotion Agencies -
member of the Vienna Economic Forum (VEF) and as a member of the World
Association of Investment Promotion Agencies (WAIPA).