Two first-rate communications and IT international companies want to establish an operating basis north of Bucharest. Their coming here is met halfway by a governmental programme, proposed by the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT). The programme's name is Cyber Centre Bucharest.
The programme's aim is to create the equivalent of a technological park to bring operations of IT and communications companies together. The total start-up investments are estimated at $100 million, 20% of which will be provided by the State.
Ministry sources say that a large communications company is willing to come up with $30 million, while another IT company wants to assemble its computers here.
There will be no tax holiday for the companies in the centre, but the State will provide land and buildings, as well as a certain protection for the investors' money.
In the event of investments in excess of $1 million, there is hope for incentives, but the project does not clearly specify what kind of incentives. Anyway, no investor will be allowed in this venture without committing to keep the core business and the personnel for a specific amount of years.
The MCIT project authors anticipate a 50% internal profitability rate, assuming that the member firms will make at least $500,000 in profit every year.
Apart from production, Cyber Centre will attempt to build a professional network to help faculties, students, companies and specialists in this field explore the opportunities the new economy provides. This concept is practically a combination between a business incubator, a cybernetics campus and a technological park.
"The Ministry wants to persuade big companies to develop productive operations here, to keep the highly skilled work force in Romania," says Adriana Ticau, IT Strategy manager within MCIT.
The most difficult hurdles to overcome in the construction of the Cyber Centre are patrimony-related. Both the production halls in Pipera and Baneasa and the surrounding pieces of land have an uncertain legal status.
At present, there are 80 lawsuits over fields in this area in progress, while in some cases, the production halls are held by factories only formally, as they are actually leased to private companies working with state-run ones. Several ministries at the moment are trying to find the contracts and establish who owns what.
Technological parks are seen as a quick development solution in many poor countries worldwide, which have given up hope of catching up with the technological advance in other fields and count on the dynamics of this sector.
The Indian Government, for example, declared software development as a national priority and backs it by fiscal measures going as far as a ten-year tax holiday. The Andaluzia technological park in Spain does not offer tax-exemptions but provides pieces of land, halls and offices already built for extremely low prices.
On the other hand, the centre in Bucharest is only the beginning: if it works, MCIT will set up regional centres in mono-industrial cities such as Galati, Brasov and Resita.
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