Indians to construct IT park Serbia hopes will be biggest in Europe
BELGRADE (AFP) – An Indian company looking to cash in on Eastern European «near-sourcing» signed a deal here yesterday to construct an IT park that Serbia hopes will become the biggest on the continent. The deal with Bangalore-based property developer Embassy Group was potentially worth up to $600 million dollars (-425 million) over five years, which would make it Serbia’s biggest ever greenfield investment, said Economy and Regional Development Minister Mladan Dinkic. «I’m very satisfied… that today I signed a memorandum of understanding for the construction of the first IT park in Serbia and, I’d say, the future biggest technology park in the whole of Europe,» Dinkic told a press conference. Initially, the technology park would occupy 280 hectares (690 acres) of land in an industrial zone of the northern town of Indjija, where it would employ around 2,500 IT professionals, said Dinkic. However, depending on client uptake, it could be expanded during the next five years to offer global IT companies 250,000 square meters of office space for up to 25,000 employees, he added. Embassy Group Chairman Jitu Virwani welcomed the agreement with Serbia, which he said had already attracted interest from some of its biggest clients, such as IBM and Hewlett-Packard. «We’ve been looking for an East European country, mainly from the perspective of having some of our clients from the IT sector to be servicing the Eastern European market,» Virwani said at the end of the signing ceremony. «After a lot of research, we found Belgrade to be highly suitable for the needs of our clients, more from the perspective of costs,» he added. «We see Serbia as the same position as Bangalore or India was, as far as the IT sector (is concerned), in 1991.» The deal aims to capitalize on the growing shift among global IT companies to «near-source» technology services closer to Western clients, rather than outsourcing them to India, where costs are rising. Ahead of the signing, Indjija Mayor Goran Jesic told AFP that the IT park had the potential to become Serbia’s single biggest greenfield investment within a few years. The deal is seen as yet another win for Indjija, whose Mayor Goran Jesic has already won praise for fostering an «economic miracle» in the town, halfway between Serbia’s two biggest cities of Belgrade and Novi Sad. Jesic, 33, told AFP he was confident the project for the technology park will also boost the national economy, improve its war-tarnished image and help persuade young Serbs they have a future in their own country. »The results of this project (will be) the most important for our country,» which Jesic said had lost 300,000 of its most educated youths in the brain drain that went with the bloody collapse of Yugoslavia. Another of his projects to have won recognition abroad is «System48,» offering citizens and investors speedy e-governance through a partnership with Microsoft. Along with its growing economic reputation, Indjija shot to prominence among European funk-rock fans in June when some 100,000 of them converged on it for a Red Hot Chilli Peppers concert.
