The financing of the direction of digital transformation and cybersecurity planned in the state budget for 2021 is catastrophically insufficient, said Deputy Prime Minister - Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine Mykhailo Fedorov.

"We studied international experience and, for example, Norway, Denmark, Estonia spend from 1% to 4% of the country's total budget on the direction of digital transformation, which also includes the direction of cyber security. In our country today, the budget has already been submitted to the Verkhovna Rada, this is 0.15% and this is catastrophically low for one of the highest priority sectors of the digital economy," he said during the online conference "Digital transformation of the state: prospects and risks of cyber security" on Friday.

On the other hand, according to Fedorov, this is already an achievement compared to last year, when only several tens of UAH millions were allocated for the direction of digital transformation.

"The direction of cyber defense and "cyber" in general is becoming a priority for us. During this year we were able to build basic infrastructure things - we launched the One Stop Shop portal for public services, launched a mobile application. Millions of users is an indicator that we are moving in right direction, in 2021-2023 cyber security will be our priority," Fedorov said.

According to him, Ukraine needs to elaborate a strategy for development of the digital economy in order to make a qualitative "leap" in economic development.

Fedorov also noted the need to invest in education and science in terms of working with IT and digital solutions, since it is difficult to develop any industry without a sufficient number of field specialists.