VeriFone, Yandex aiming for Belarusian Hi-Tech Park

According to Valery Tsepkalo, the interest of major foreign companies in the Park has increased considerably lately. Last year a daughter enterprise of the Russian company Sberbank Technologies joined the HTP. This year daughter enterprises of the famous foreign companies VeriFone (an American IT developer, a major manufacturer of payment terminals) and Yandex (a Russian IT company, which owns the Yandex search system and the Yandex web portal) can become residents of the Park.

Valery Tsepkalo remarked that the HTP administration does not pursue an active marketing policy to attract new residents. “Word of mouth works well now and therefore there is no need to advertise ourselves,” he explained.

In 2012 the number of Hi-Tech Park residents rose by 13 to reach 118 corporations, with about half of them being joint ventures and foreign-owned enterprises. Last year as many as 2,500 jobs were created in the Belarusian Hi-Tech Park. At present the companies that are part of the Park employ about 14,500 specialists.

The Belarusian Hi-Tech Park is one of the largest IT clusters in Central and Eastern Europe. According to estimates of a global analytical company, Belarus is one of the top 30 offshore programming countries. As many as 54% of the HTP residents sell the software they develop. Last year six HTP resident companies were put on the list of the world’s best providers of IT services.