The Ministry of Industry and Energy’s annual study of the Spanish information technology sector has led it to claim that the sector is heading towards recovery. This hypothesis is based on the fact that overall turnover in 1993 was down ‘only’ 3.78% on 1992 to $6,542m, compared with 1992’s fall of 6% to $6,799m in 1991. The gross domestic market fell by 4.98% to $5,603m but exports managed to grow up 4.79% to $938.58. But the number of people employed by the information technology sector fell 5.56% to 49,995. A report in Computer World Espana says the Ministry believes that in spite of the economic recession, technological development has not been held back, but for all its optimism, it is an unescapable fact that turnover has fallen by almost $770m since 1991. By segments, hardware has fallen by 9% and software dropped 5%. Services have fallen very slightly, while consumables were up by almost 18%. Within the domestic market, hardware represents almost the same volume of business as software and services combined. Microcomputing, with sales of $1,345m, is the most important sub-segment within hardware, representing almost three quarters of the domestic market, while the second sub-segment here is printing systems, $331m. Basic and communications software accounted for 70% of the domestic software market, $477m and within services, bespoke software and hardware maintenance were the most important.
