A technician works on a protective cybersecurity system on Jan. 22, 2019 in Lille, France, during the 11th International Cybersecurity Forum.

Ukraine will introduce an immigration quota for 5,000 foreign information technology specialists per year, the Digital Transformation Ministry announced on Feb. 26.

The quota will come into effect on March 2. Since the announcement was published, the ministry has already received requests from IT companies to offer jobs through the program, Oleksandr Bornyakov, the deputy minister, said.

If the government sees that all 5,000 spots are filled, it will consider allowing additional tech immigrants, he added.

The government believes this quota will create an incentive for highly qualified foreign specialists to work in Ukraine and help solve the shortage of specialists in Ukraine’s growing IT industry.

“The demand for IT specialists greatly exceeds the (growth) potential of the domestic market,” the ministry stated on Facebook.

Under the quota, foreign IT workers will have the possibility of obtaining a permanent residence card. They won’t need to renew their annual work permit, which foreigners working in Ukraine currently must do.

It will also give them the possibility to choose wherever they want to work. That is a significant advantage over the only current option: a work permit and temporary residency permit, which are linked to one specific workplace. When a foreigner takes another job, the work permit has to be renewed.

The quota will also allow these tech specialists to bring their families to Ukraine and open businesses in the country.

However, there are limits regarding the number of foreigners per city: 2,500 people in Kyiv, 700 in Kharkiv, and 600 each in Dnipro, Odesa and Lviv.

In 2019, the tech industry’s revenues increased by 30%, reaching $5.4 billion. However, Ukraine still doesn’t fully utilize its huge reserve of over 200,000 tech specialists, as some of them move abroad as soon as their firms achieve any access. Poorly written laws on the protection of intellectual property rights and few investment opportunities are among the reasons behind their desire to leave Ukraine.

At the same time, Ukrainian universities produce up to 17,000 IT professionals per year, which is not enough to cover the demand in the industry: 40,000 jobs annually.

The ministry believes that the Immigration quotas will partially cover the market’s need for highly skilled professionals, without affecting the demand for Ukrainian workers. The main idea is to develop the market as fast as possible thanks to foreign specialists, thus making it competitive and attractive to Ukrainian workers.