Russia will compete heavily the Bulgarian nanocentre
Adelina Marini, May 23, 2009
There's going to be a hard competition to the Bulgarian mega initiative for the creation of a nano-technological centre for Central and Eastern Europe, for which the government yesterday signed an agreement with IBM. "Tens mysterious nano-factories-centres will cover Russia. What's this - for now it is hard to understand - but each centre will cost 2-3 bn rubles of investment". This is what the famous Anatoly Chubais said - the person that lead Russian privatisation process in the administration of Boris Eltsin and now director of "Rosnano", quoted by "Izvestia" newspaper. Chubais has announced this new ambitious and dear plan in Novosibirsk where one of the centres will be created. The idea is 20 to 30 centres to be creates in all over Russia which, of course, would be a heavy competition to the Bulgarian plan.
Yesterday in the Council of ministers the General framework agreement has been signed, which gives the basic parametres for the creation of the Bulgarian nanocentre. Consultants of IBM will participate in its creation by providing the most modern equipment and the latest achievements in nano-science. There's a stunning resemblance in the reasons that motivate Russia and Bulgaria to start such an expensive action - global economic recession. "Because, together with the measures and instruments to counteract the crisis the starting positions after the crisis are as equally important as well as the preparation of post-crisis recovery of the economy", the Bulgarian finance minister Plamen Oresharski said.
The interesting thing in the Bulgarian case is that the framework agreement has been signed in the presence of the American ambassador to Sofia Nancy McEldowney who said that this was a real step forward for the country and for US-Bulgarian partnership. She also underlined that the most important thing that this agreement would do is position and profile the country as a leader in innovation and an agent of economic growth in the whole region, the Government information service reported.