Establishments with 10 or more employees had similar ICT equipment in 2007 to other business sectors

The primary sector of the A.C. of the Basque Country has doubled its ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) equipment between 2005 to 2007, according to data prepared by Eustat. Despite this favourable trend, even though the user percentages still remain low due to the small size of the majority of the establishments (98.3% have 2 or less employees), which makes it difficult for the majority of them to have access to this equipment.

In fact, the percentages regarding availability of these technologies in primary sector establishments still remain far behind other sectors of the Basque economy, except in the case of mobile telephones, as 57.0% of companies in this sector have one. Other basic equipment is still not widely used, both in terms of use of computers (11.8%), Internet access (11.1%) or email (9.6%). Practically none of the companies had a website, as only 0.8% are online.

Table 1: Establishments by information and communication technology equipment according to economic sector, employment stratum and year. (%)

Source: EUSTAT

This situation changes completely if the size of the establishments is taken into account. Among establishments with 10 or more people, the equipment average is rather higher, ranging between 100% of those that have mobile telephones and 76.2% that have email. 96.3% and 80.9% have access to a computer and Internet, respectively and are, therefore, very close to the other sectors of the Basque economy.

Fishing companies have more ICT equipment than agricultural companies

Particularly noteworthy is that the percentages obtained in the primary sector are very different for agricultural or fishing companies, with much high equipment percentages being recorded in the latter case. However, this has practically no impact on the total, as fishing companies account for barely 0.8% of the primary sector.

While the availability of these technologies in the agricultural sector was 56.7% for mobile telephones, 11.4% for computers, 10.8% for Internet and 9.2% for email, these percentages for fishing companies stood at 100% for mobile telephones and 69.4% of these companies had computers, 53.2% were connected to Internet and 50.7% had access to email.

Graph 1: ICT equipment in establishments according to economic sectors. (%)

Source: EUSTAT

The fact that these differences are not only due to the different activities, but also to the size of the establishments must be taken into account. While practically all of the establishments of the agricultural sector have less than 10 employees, the number of companies in the fishing sector with less than 10 or 10 and more employees is far more evenly distributed.

As far as the means for accessing Internet are concerned, special mention should be made of the increase in this sector of “other connections to Internet”, as there is a clear increase in the use of new far-reaching wireless technologies, such as Wimax connections in the agricultural sector, particularly in Álava, and via satellite in the fishing sector. The same trend as in other sectors, i.e., an increase in the ADSL lines and a decrease in the use of the modem and the ISDN lines, could be see in the case of other connections.