Brazil’s ICT industry generated over US$140bn in revenues in 2023

Brazil’s ICT industry generated 708bn reais (US$142bn) in revenues last year, an increase in real terms of 5.9% on 2022.

The industry’s share of GDP stood at 6.5%, according to an annual industry report by ICT association Brasscom.

Of the 708bn reais, IT accounted for 422bn, including software, services, cloud, hardware and digital technologies at companies, and 285bn reais came from telecom services, comprising voice, data and network implementation.

Within IT, cloud generated 46.5bn reais in sales, according to Brasscom’s figures, up 25.1% on 2022. The figure encompasses software-as-a-service, platforms and infrastructure such as datacenters.

The IT services segment led growth and expanded 32.9% to 104bn reais, whereas software revenue rose 21.6% to 43.8bn reais, the report shows. 

Hardware, in turn, saw a 15.4% drop in revenues to 107bn reais, said Brasscom.

ICT exports were worth 46.2bn reais, including hardware and services, up 9.1%. Hardware exports were down 7.4%. 

Imports fell 2.8% to 183bn reais.

According to Brasscom, Brazil is the world's 10th largest ICT market and the only country in Latin America in the top 10. The association said the Brazilian ICT industry represents 30% of the sector in Latin America.

The trade group also said the ICT industry employed 2.05mn people at the end of the year, or 4% of the national workforce and up 29,200 in the year. 

The average salary in the areas of high value services and software is 2.5 times more than the national average, according to Brasscom.

By 2027, the association forecasts investments of around 730bn reais in digital transformation technologies.

Cloud, information security and AI are expected to account for the bulk of the investments at 258bn reais, 178bn reais and 139bn reais, respectively.