Software piracy in Serbia to be reduced from 76% to 70%

The piracy rate in Serbia may drop from last year's 76% to 70% in 2008 - Dragomir Kojić, the representative of the organization for promotion of legal software Business Software Alliance (BSA), estimated yesterday (November 13, 2008).

He said that te expected decline was very high and that the intensified work of the Tax Administration and the Special Department of the Regional Public Prosecution Office for fight against high-technology crime in Belgrade would contribute to eradication of piracy to a great extent.

The CEO of the Belgrade-based "Microsoft" office, Vladan Živanović, said that Serbia annually lost 72m USD because of illegal software use, first of all, due to unpaid taxes.

The Tax Administration started regular checks of the software in companies this year and they carried out control in 1,150 enterprises prior to the end of October and pressed 101 charges, which is less that 10%.

As Živanović points out, for every dollar that "Microsoft" loses due to use of piracy software, the partner companies lose five dollars because they do not provide the services of training, application and development of additional solutions. He also added that piracy reduced the number of available jobs for IT experts.

Piracy rate - Moldova 92%, Azerbeijan 92%, Ukraine 83%, Montenegro 83%, Serbia 76%, Albania 73%, Romania 68%, Bulgaria 68%, BiH 68%, Macedonia 68%, Croatia 54%, Slovenia 48%, Slovakia 45%, Hungary 42%, Czech Republic 39% .