Governments in Middle East and North Africa to Spend $11.5 Billion on IT in 2016

Estimated reading time: 1 minute

Governments in the Middle East and North Africa will spend $11.5 billion on IT products and services in 2016, according to Gartner, Inc. This forecast includes spending on internal services, software, IT services, data center systems, devices and telecom services. Government comprises state and local governments and national government.

Telecom services, which include fixed and mobile telecom services, will be the largest overall spending category throughout the forecast period within the government sector. It is expected to be $4.7 billion in 2016, with mobile network services being the largest sub-segment with $3.1 billion in spending.

“The software segment includes enterprise resource planning (ERP), supply chain management (SCM), customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise application software, infrastructure software and vertical specific software (VSS). Software spending will grow 9.8% over 2015 spending, to reach $1.2 billion in 2016,” said Moutusi Sau, principal research analyst at Gartner. “VSS will grow 11.4% in 2016 to reach $505 million. VSS are software applications that are unique to a vertical industry. In government, VSS includes software that focus on agency-specific processes and domain areas, such as revenue and tax, case management.”

Further information on government sector IT spending is available to Gartner clients in the report Gartner report, Forecast: Enterprise IT Spending for the Government and Education Markets, Worldwide, 2014-2020, 1Q16 Update. The forecasts provide total enterprise IT spending, including internal spending and multiple lines of detail for spending on hardware, software, IT services, and telecommunications for vertical industries and 43 countries within seven geographies.