Runet's daily audience reaches 95.3 million Russian users - deputy PM

MOSCOW. April 7 (Interfax) - Over 95 million people surf the Russian segment of the Internet, also known as the Runet, every day, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko said.

"The daily Runet audience currently stands at 95.3 million citizens. The withdrawal of Western companies has opened up a window of opportunity for domestic developers and vendors, who are seeing a huge demand for new solutions," Chernyshenko's press service quoted his greetings to Internet users on Runet Day as saying.

The national domain .RU turned 29 on April 7.

According to analysts from the Russian Association of Electronic Communications, the Runet demonstrated a 24% growth in 2022, and its contribution to the Russian economy neared 12 trillion rubles, Chernyshenko said.

The Association's preliminary outlook, published in mid-December, says that the Russian virtual economy increased 24% year-on-year to 11.8 trillion rubles, while growth rates nearly halved. The Runet economy soared 41% year-on-year in 2020 and was up 42% in 2021.

Chernyshenko said the growing popularity of IT professions in Russia: over 100,000 people from other industries took IT jobs in 2022, while 117,000 IT students enrolled in budget-funded bachelor and specialist programs, up 3,200 from the year before.