Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications Rasim Ljajić has said early today that last year Serbia exported software and software services in the value of 450 million euros and that the export in that field of information and communication technologies has been in the upward trend year after year.

Mr Ljajić has added that the IT sector is one of the strategic economic branches in our country, and that Serbia takes between 30th and 50th place in the world ranking list when it comes to the software industry, which makes it currently the “best ranked economic branch in Serbia”.

In the headquarters of the Regulatory Agency for Electronic Communications and Postal Services of Serbia, where the joint workshop of the RATEL and Turkish IT company Electronica was opened, devoted to the registration of mobile phones, Mr Ljajić has said that Serbia and Turkey have good economic ties, with an increasing volume of trade, which was over 700 million euros last year.

“Our goal is to have around a billion euro trade exchange. I believe that by the end of this year the number of Turkish companies in Serbia will reach 100, which is not enough, not many, but it definitely is an advancement compared to the past”, Mr Ljajić has said.

He has added that Serbia and Turkey want to expand the volume of the activities which develop this cooperation, and that the IT sector is one of the areas where such cooperation of the two economies has not existed so far.

Ambassador of Turkey Kemal Bozay has stated that this workshop is important indeed, since Turkey and Serbia are friends, whose friendship is also based on the economic cooperation, and one of the stakeholders of the cooperation is Deputy Prime Minister Rasim Ljajić, with whom he has worked together in two fields, trade and tourism.

“We should work together in the field of telecommunications as well, because telecommunication is a field we have not analysed yet.” Mr Bozay has said.