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April 2019 www.intellinews.com I Page 2
CEE tech exports boom
"The global technology boom has created an extremely lucrative and competitive industry with countries around the world desperately trying to take the lead - a key indicator of tech investments is high technology exports," reads the study.
"High-tech exports are products that require significant resources and research in order to develop and produce, including the aerospace, computer, pharmaceutical, scientific instruments and electrical machinery industries, just to name a few," the study continues.
Meanwhile, when it comes to individual countries' performance in high-tech exports, those from the CEE region have made a noticeable progress over the last 10 years.
Overall, most countries in the CEE region showed at least 5% growth in high-tech exports over the period in question, while for many, it amounted to double digits, and the top 20 in terms of growth pace features exclusively countries from the region.
Albania made the most impressive progress as its value of high-tech exports more than doubled from just under $4mn in 2006 to over $8mn in
2016. Albania was followed by Azerbaijan, which achieved a 41.1% growth, Montenegro (31.9%), Armenia (21.5%) and Romania (19.7%).
The top 10 also features Poland, Latvia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lithuania and Slovakia.
"We live in a truly digital age, where technology dominates the world’s economy by staggering amounts and is ingrained in both our professional and personal lives," Vishal Chhatralia, Senior
Vice President of Digital at RS Components, tells bneTech. "It has become increasingly important that entire countries - not just businesses - are able to keep up with these advancements as tech- nology evolves at an increasingly rapid rate."
According to Chhatralia, analysing the high-tech exports of European countries across the last decade shows the impact of the technological boom and how countries are making increasing efforts to catch up with one another to be a leader in the industry.
"The likes of Albania and Azerbaijan have the highest growth rate, although just ten years ago their export figures were some of the lowest in the continent," stresses Chhatralia. "Their rates of growth really reflect the pressures on countries to keep up with the digital revolution that simply shows no signs of stopping just yet."
Top five countries with the highest average annual growth rates (AAGR)
Country
2006 High-tech Export Value
2016 High-tech Export Value
10-year AAGR
Albania
Montenegro
Romania
Source: RS Components
$3,968,947
$3,502,499
$1,236,505,248
$8,424,644
$2,778,804
$4,297,656,941
155.2%
31.9%
19.7%
Azerbaijan
$9,073,107
$9,132,464
41.1%
Armenia
$5,101,971
$21,142,634
21.5%