El vuelo del unicornio: cómo adquirió sus alas Estonia
La digitalización ha convertido al país en un centro para unicornios tecnológicos. Sandra Särav, viceministra de Economía e Innovación de Estonia, explica cómo lo lograron.
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00:00¡Bienvenidos a la Gran Pregunta!
00:03Soy Angela Barnes, y hoy me uno con Sandra Sariv,
00:07ministra de Economía y Innovación del Departamento de Estonia.
00:11Es un placer tenerle en la Gran Pregunta, Sandra.
00:13Gracias por unirse.
00:15Estonia es muy interesante para hablar acerca de la digitalización de servicios públicos.
00:21También estaba en el 9º lugar en las listas de la UE.
00:25a la digitalización de los servicios públicos.
00:27Fue nombrada 9ª en la EU también en el Índice de Economía y Sociedad Digital de la Comisión Europea de 2022.
00:35Pero ha sido bastante largo el camino desde 1991, cuando Estonia se convirtió en independiente de nuevo.
00:42Entonces, primero, ¿podrías hablarme de la economía y la infraestructura en 1991
00:48y de cómo el país llegó a donde está ahora?
00:51Así que, un pequeño comentario.
00:53En la 9ª nombramos en general, pero cuando se trata de ofrecer servicios públicos digitales,
00:57Estonia siempre se encuentra en el top 3,
00:59ya que Estonia tiene 99% de todos los servicios públicos disponibles digitalmente en 1991.
01:05Estonia recuperó su independencia
01:07y hemos estado ocupados ilegalmente por la Unión Soviética durante medio siglo.
01:11Entonces, durante cinco décadas, hubo casi cero crecimiento económico.
01:15En 1938, antes de la ocupación soviética,
01:19la economía de Estonia era aproximadamente igual a la de Finlandia, que es nuestro otro vecino.
01:23Roughly you could say that both Finland and Estonia had 2,500 international dollars GDP per capita.
01:30In 1991, Estonia's GDP per capita was even lower than prior, than half a century earlier,
01:36so roughly 2,000 euros per capita.
01:39So you can imagine half a century of virtually no economic development,
01:43compared to Finland, for instance,
01:45who had had half a century to have economic focus and support,
01:50and their GDP per capita by 1991 was the same as Estonia's is today,
01:55so around 28,000 euros per capita GDP.
02:00So yes, this half a century didn't bring us any new developments.
02:04Our infrastructure was outdated.
02:06There was virtually no free economy.
02:08You know, it was a communist era in our history.
02:11So we had to have a fully fresh restart back in 1991,
02:15and luckily we had very young, fresh politicians at the time
02:19who thought that Estonia is going to need to do something different, and we did.
02:22Was it necessary to build public infrastructure the way that you have done,
02:26and how do you think it has put Estonia ahead?
02:29So half-jokingly we say that we were too poor to afford anything else,
02:33which is, in the same time, it's also a correct thing to say.
02:37So we skipped a lot of the steps that people were doing in the second half of the 20th century.
02:42So we went virtually from 1940 to the new era of technologies.
02:47We realized that we need to be efficient,
02:50which is one of the keys why Estonia is so digitalized in the first place.
02:53Digitalization brings you actually efficiency,
02:56because you can do the same things with less resources, with less workforce.
02:59Estonia is only a country of 1.3 million people.
03:02You imagine we're not so big, but we don't like to be called tiny.
03:05We like to be called compact.
03:07So we had to adopt digital systems in order to offer services in a more efficient way.
03:12The very first digital service that we had back in the year 2000 was actually tax declarations.
03:17So instead of queuing in line, we digitalized the service,
03:20and nowadays it takes less than five minutes to declare your taxes.
03:23So efficiency.
03:25But the private sector hasn't subscribed in the same way, has it?
03:29Why do you think that is? Is it to do with the trust in digitalization or something else?
03:34No, not at all. I mean, still, all of the companies are set up online.
03:37You cannot even set up a company physically on paper somewhere,
03:40and still all the taxes are declared online.
03:43But the use of digital technologies, I think, has to do with the fact that we have so many companies.
03:47As I mentioned, every 10th Estonian has their own company.
03:5084% are micro-companies.
03:52I mean, if you set up your ice cream booth somewhere for the summer,
03:56perhaps there is not so much to digitalize.
03:58So I think this is where the secret lays,
04:01why we're not so digitalized in the business sector.
04:04It's because we have so many companies, and a large sum of them are small companies.
04:08What do you think other EU member states could learn from how you have progressed
04:12and how you've digitalized completely your public services?
04:15Well, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this on air,
04:17but Estonia has something called the Skype Mafia.
04:20So Skype was set up initially in Estonia, and nobody uses Skype anymore,
04:24but it was very popular, let's say, 10 years ago, 7 years ago.
04:28And so Skype was set up in Estonia,
04:30and those guys and girls who were the early employees at Skype,
04:34they went on and they built their own startups and companies.
04:37And Estonia has 10 tech unicorns, which per capita is the most in Europe.
04:42And those people who built Skype then went to build on their own companies,
04:45and those companies of the first gen then went on and built their second gen companies,
04:50and now we're already third gen Skype companies.
04:52And this community is very, very tight.
04:54Estonia is a compact country, if you remember,
04:56so people talk to one another and they give advice,
04:58and this is a breeding ground for startups, if I may say so.
05:02That's really impressive, 10 unicorns in Estonia.
05:05And that is impressive per capita.
05:14What does Estonia have to offer as well?
05:16A foreign corporation wanting to set up a company in Estonia.
05:20I know you've given rise to globally successful companies like Bolt, Skype and Wise.
05:26It's the most competitive tax environment in the OECD countries for 6 or 7 years in a row already.
05:32We have 0% corporate tax on reinvested profits,
05:35so unless you take out dividends, as long as you reinvest,
05:39there's no corporate tax in Estonia, which is a competitive advantage.
05:44Estonia attracts a lot of capital per capita again,
05:47so we say per capita Estonia always wins.
05:50In the year 2022 alone, Estonian startups attracted 1.3 billion euros,
05:55and this was on average 6-7 times more than in Europe per capita.
06:01So that's the e-residency card, is it?
06:03The e-residency card is similar to Estonia's national ID card,
06:07so national ID card in Estonia is mandatory.
06:09So what's e-residency is, we figured we can give access to Estonia's business environment
06:14with a similar type of digital ID.
06:16It's not your personal identity document, you cannot travel with it,
06:20however you can access those Estonian digital services.
06:24You can open up a company online, wherever you're based in the world,
06:27and you can open up a company in Estonia in 15 minutes and 33 seconds,
06:31which is a world record.
06:33So of course, this is only if you do it regularly.
06:36If you're a newbie, it would take you a couple of hours, but still it's very efficient.
06:40You can fully declare your taxes online, you can provide digital signatures for documents,
06:44you can acquire property, you can acquire new companies without ever having to show up physically.
06:49And currently we have globally over 100,000 e-residents
06:52who have opened around 30,000 companies in Estonia,
06:55and they not only bring us economic benefit by paying some taxes in Estonia,
07:00but they employ locally, they bring new innovation to Estonia,
07:03so we're really happy with the e-residency project.
07:05It sounds like a very appealing place then for startups to do business.
07:09And Estonia is relatively small, as we've said.
07:12Do you think that's made it easier to create digital services?
07:16So both yes and no.
07:18It's made it easier because obviously you have only 1.3 million people.
07:22However, it's more difficult because as we started in 1991,
07:25we didn't have a lot of resources, meaning capital.
07:28So if you are a larger country, if you have more capital,
07:31it's easier to build the best systems possible.
07:35So we've always had to innovate and be more inspired
07:39with what we can do with the resources that we have.
07:41That's great to get your insights on all of that.
07:43Sandra Sarra, thank you ever so much for talking to us on The Big Question.
07:46It's been a pleasure to have you on the show.
07:48Thank you so much for having me.