Indian co to build IT park in Serb town
Monday, 24 September 2007
INDJIJA, Serbia, Sept 23 (AFP): Goran Jesic, a young mayor with a reputation for investment coups, will sign a deal this week with an Indian company to build an IT park here, yet another win for this tiny Serbian town already hailed as an "economic miracle."
Jesic is confident the project for the technology park will also boost the national economy, improve its war-tarnished image and help persuade young Serbians that they have a future in their own country.
The preliminary contract with Embassy Group, a property developer based in Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, was set to be signed Monday, Jesic told the news agency.
"It's 200 hectares, the first stage is 25 million euros (35 million dollars), without infrastructure and without the land," said Jesic.
"If everything is okay, from next year the same company wants to pay and build stage two, stage three and stage four ... it's (potentially worth) about 200-250 million euros," added the 33-year-old.
For the town to have struck a deal that could rake in tens of millions of euros in investment is no mean feat.
Indjija is an otherwise featureless town on the Pannonian plain 42 kilometres north of Belgrade and 37 kilometres south of Novi Sad, Serbia's second city.
"The results of this project (will be) the most important for our country," which Jesic said had lost 300,000 of its most highly educated youths in the brain-drain that went with the bloody collapse of former Yugoslavia.
"This is because the biggest companies in the world will probably come to Serbia-Micosoft, IBM and others-and the best people won't leave our country."
The investment is part of 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, said Jesic.
That it has been agreed between two places with similar names-India and Indjija-is no coincidence, for that was one of the reasons the country's ambassador, Ajay Swarup, made a visit to the town soon after moving to Belgrade late last year.
Ties have since grown between the tiny municipality of 53,000 inhabitants and the South Asian giant with a population of more than one billion.
In spite of its modest size, Indjija has the most impressive economic record in Serbia, which only managed to attract a total of 300-400 million euros in foreign direct investment last year.
Indjija alone has pulled in around 300 million euros (415 million dollars) worth of greenfield investments that have created at least 2,000 jobs during the past three years.
Jesic is confident the project for the technology park will also boost the national economy, improve its war-tarnished image and help persuade young Serbians that they have a future in their own country.
The preliminary contract with Embassy Group, a property developer based in Bangalore, India's Silicon Valley, was set to be signed Monday, Jesic told the news agency.
"It's 200 hectares, the first stage is 25 million euros (35 million dollars), without infrastructure and without the land," said Jesic.
"If everything is okay, from next year the same company wants to pay and build stage two, stage three and stage four ... it's (potentially worth) about 200-250 million euros," added the 33-year-old.
For the town to have struck a deal that could rake in tens of millions of euros in investment is no mean feat.
Indjija is an otherwise featureless town on the Pannonian plain 42 kilometres north of Belgrade and 37 kilometres south of Novi Sad, Serbia's second city.
"The results of this project (will be) the most important for our country," which Jesic said had lost 300,000 of its most highly educated youths in the brain-drain that went with the bloody collapse of former Yugoslavia.
"This is because the biggest companies in the world will probably come to Serbia-Micosoft, IBM and others-and the best people won't leave our country."
The investment is part of 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, said Jesic.
That it has been agreed between two places with similar names-India and Indjija-is no coincidence, for that was one of the reasons the country's ambassador, Ajay Swarup, made a visit to the town soon after moving to Belgrade late last year.
Ties have since grown between the tiny municipality of 53,000 inhabitants and the South Asian giant with a population of more than one billion.
In spite of its modest size, Indjija has the most impressive economic record in Serbia, which only managed to attract a total of 300-400 million euros in foreign direct investment last year.
Indjija alone has pulled in around 300 million euros (415 million dollars) worth of greenfield investments that have created at least 2,000 jobs during the past three years.