Russian Media Praised the Potential of Belarus Hi-Tech Park
Russian journalists were impressed by the potential of the HTP and the development of the IT sector in Belarus during their visit to the Hi-Tech Park on October 16. The visit was a part of the annual press tour of Russian media representatives to Belarus.
Being a unique innovative IT cluster, one of the leading in Central and Eastern Europe, the Hi-Tech Park aroused great interest among Russian journalists. Speaking about activities of the HTP, Valery Tsepkalo, Director of the HTP Administration, revealed its peculiarities, main achievements and prospects.
Today, 7 HTP resident-companies are listed among the 500 world’s largest IT companies and 5 companies are on the Global Outsourcing 100 list. Major companies from over 55 countries worldwide are among HTP’scustomers. The HTP fully meets the needs of the internal market, while 90% of its production is exported. Such HTP products as World of Tanks and Viber are well-known throughout the world.
In addition, R&D centers of large IT companies, such as Yandex or Sberbank-Technology, for example, are actively developing within the HTP. As a result, Belarus surpassed the world leaders – the USA and India – on software exports per capita in 2013. Belarus exports of software and services amounted to $552 million last year which is 30 times as high as in 2004, before the HTP was established.
Valery Tsepkalo noted that software development was initially chosen as a priority for Belarus Hi-Tech Park which allowed its companies to focus and achieve some success. Another peculiarity of the HTP is its special legal regime valid throughout Belarus; this initiative enables to use the educational, scientific and research, professional and infrastructure capacity of the whole country.
At the same time, the main objective of the HTP is to provide favorable environment for the development of information technology. For this purpose, the HTP makes great efforts to improve IT education, including active cooperation with universities, opening of joint laboratories and branches of university departments and support for IT startups. Thus, in September 2014,the HTP opened the country’s first business incubatorto promote the development of innovative business in the IT sector.
The journalists also had an opportunity to ask some questions after the presentation. They were interested in largest Belarusian projects, products and services provided by the HTP resident-companies, as well as the plans to develop Belarus Hi-Tech Park, its competitiveness in the world market and the role of the HTP in the development of information technology. Then the journalists visited the HTP resident-company System Technologies where they could see the company’s offices and ask Belarusian programmers about the benefits of working in the Hi-Tech Park.
This year, over 100 journalists from 50 regions of Russia took part in the 12th and the largest press tour. Both regional and leading federal printed and broadcasting companies were represented. The total circulation of newspapers and magazines to highlight the visit to Belarus is 3.6 million copies; the total viewership is 135 million people and listenership – 120 million people.
