The Head of the Supervisory Board of Ajax Systems shared his thoughts on the country's economy today and the role the technology sector plays in it.
The Head of the Supervisory Board of Ajax Systems shared his thoughts on the country's economy today and the role the technology sector plays in it.
Oleksandr Konotopsky, Head of the Supervisory Board of Ajax Systems, spoke about his vision of the economic situation in Ukraine and the influence of the technology sector on it during an event dedicated to the 3rd anniversary of "Diya.City", a journalist from dev.ua reports.
"From an economic point of view, Ukraine is a real miracle, but a miracle with a minus sign. Therefore, the size of Ukraine's economy for 30 million people is the same as the size of Dubai's economy for 4 million people. You need to be able to create such a "miracle". We have been creating it together for 30 years. We need to sit down and understand that we are in deep trouble," the entrepreneur noted.
He added that Ukrainian IT is talented engineers who did not have work in mechanics, optics, electronics - old industries that the Soviet Union lost.
"For example, Mercedes-Benz can make complex mechanics, but there is not a single specialist in this area here. That's why a large number of engineers went into programming, because you don't need anything for this - just a computer and the Internet. It's easy to study this specialty," said Konotopsky.
The entrepreneur compared approximately 300,000 Ukrainian IT specialists to oil (a valuable resource — ed.). “But oil can be in Saudi Arabia, or maybe in Venezuela. But, as in that joke, there is a nuance. To make an economy out of oil, you need to build a lot of infrastructure like in Saudi Arabia. The state must take a step and it is taking it,” noted the head of the Supervisory Board of Ajax Systems.
From the point of view of an entrepreneur, “Diya.City” is the second-best reform after the reform of individual entrepreneurs in the entire period of Ukraine’s independence. “People who build infrastructure are entrepreneurs, and engineers are oil. If people leave, production will decrease. We must stop measuring the IT industry by the size of IT exports, because this is a salary project for programmers. Then there was a request for corporatization and “Diya.City” appeared. Now these are companies, not a salary project,” Oleksandr Konotopsky concluded.
