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Spain is still below the average European level in ICT sector development, while China and other Asian countries are growing faster than the EU

The European Commission has just published the latest data available on the ICT sector developed by JRC and the Ivie which it uses to monitor the progress of one of its main initiatives, the Single Digital Market.

The ICT sector represents 3.9% of value added, 2.5% of employment and 15.7% of total R&D investment in the European Union, according to the latest report just published by the European Commission on the state of ICT R&D activities in the EU. The data analyzed in this report are based on the results of the PREDICT (Prospective Insights on R&D in ICT) project, carried out jointly by the Directorate‑General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) and JRC (Joint Research Center of the European Commission, EC). Since 2013, data collection and analysis has been carried out jointly by JRC and the Ivie. This project is part of the actions taken by the European Commission to monitor the progress of the Single Digital Market, one of its main initiatives.

Spain is below the European average in ICT over GDP (3.3% vs. 3.9%), far from countries with high ICT sector levels that exceed 5% of the total economy. Spain is also below the European average regarding ICT sector employment and R&D expenditure, in which countries such as Finland or Sweden outstand. However, in an international context, India and China present a more dynamic behavior in the ICT sector for almost all the variables analyzed. Their annual value added and employment growth is higher than the EU, and, in the case of China, particularly noteworthy is its growth in R&D expenditure. According to the data, ICT sector growth is shifting towards the Asia-Pacific region.

The PREDICT project aims to monitor and follow-up the ICT sector in Europe and other major competitors worldwide, such as United States, Japan, China and India, among others. The information is structured according to seven categories: value added, employment, labor productivity, business expenditure on R&D (BERD), R&D personnel and research staff, as well as government budget allocations for R&D (GBARD). The data has been produced following the OCDE ICT sector classification, which includes twelve ICT manufacturing and services subsectors, as well as non-ICT sectors. As a novelty, the values for the main indicators in this year’s publication have been nowcasted for 2017.

The PREDICT dataset covers the period 1995-2015, with annual updates. The Ivie and JRC are responsible for collecting and analyzing the data for a total of 40 countries and the EU-28 aggregate. The information included in the database is highly relevant, allowing an international and European comparison of the ICT sector.