Romania is among the countries that could benefit the most from a 10% decline in the software piracy by the end of 2006, shows a survey by the IDC market research company and Business Software Alliance, the institution defending the intellectual property rights of the software developers.
Reducing software piracy by 10% from the 75% in 2001 to 65% in 2006 could help the IT sector grow by 76% in four years. As IDC sees it, the Romanian IT sector could grow from $370 million today to $660 million in 2006. The state budget could also stand to gain and get $21 million in tax revenues, due to the expansion of the taxation basis. The additional contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the period considered by IDC (2002-2006) could be worth $266 million.
Still, Romania ranks among the top five countries with the highest piracy rate in Eastern Europe, even though it has managed to cut it from 86% to 75% between 1996 and 2001. The local BSA officials were saying a few weeks ago that the software piracy rate had seemingly dropped to 72% in 2002. The final data will become available in less than a month.
The local IT sector grew from $160 million to $374 million throughout 1996-2001, the IDC surveys show. The software industry accounts for 15% of the entire IT sector, with IDC analysts estimating it to have reached $55 million by the end of 2002. The same source said the hardware industry seemingly totalled $258 million and the IT services $61 million by the end of last year.
If worldwide software piracy rate dropped from 40% to 30%, 1.5 million new jobs could be created, $64bn in tax revenues would be generated and the global economy would gain $400bn more.
The countries to benefit most would therefore be those where piracy is highest. Romania in 2001 ranked 9th in the world in terms of piracy rate, behind Vietnam (94%), China (92%), Indonesia (88%), Russia (87%), Ukraine (87%), Thailand (77%), Kuwait (76%) and Bulgaria (75%). The IDC survey covered 57 countries.
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