Investing in IT increases production, says Ipea
Folha de S. Paulo - 03/20/2008
A new study from Ipea (Institute of Applied Economic Research) shows that the companies which invest in information technology (IT) are 13.24% more productive. It is the first time a research institute shows, by means of a field research, the positive impact of the machines in the productive process. According to the economist Marco Aurélio Alves, author of the study that will be published in the next months, until the decade of the 80's the researchers believed that technology did not have any effect in the economy. Afterwards, this theory was reviewed. "It was nonsense", declares Alves. "We were sure technology shortened the production and distribution time of products, but it was not possible to get a national average". This contradiction - known as the paradox of the productivity - fell to the ground after the middle of the 90's with the growth of the installed base of computers. Fiesp (Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo) - that represents the largest industries of the country - has recently released its first report on the issue. According to Fiesp's director of the Department of Computer and Technology, José Ricardo Roriz, the industries that have destined resources for IT are selling, on the average, 20% more than those that have not invested in the sector. Little by little, small- and average-sized companies also start making part of the team that seeks gains in productivity - one of the main indexes to make the evaluation of the performance of a company. The greater the productivity, the better. After all, that means the employees are producing more during the same working hours. The research by Ipea followed the performance of 26,776 processing industries between 2001 and 2003. Among large industries, 16% make use of IT, a level that falls to 10% and 4% between the average- and small-sized companies, respectively. According to the study, in the IT companies, each worker generated, on average, R$ 58,900 (US$ 33,5 thousand) a year, in the period under consideration. In the companies without IT, this average was R$ 28,000 (US$ 15,9 thousand). According to the president of the ITIF (Information Technology and Innovation Foundation) Robert Atkinson, in the United States, nearly 78% of the productivity gains are due to investments in IT. In China, this index corresponds to 38%.