Director of the High-Tech Park Administration Valery Tsepkala told about the brand of Belarusian programmers and taxation system of HTP.
Unique atmosphere of HTP and world-famous Belarusian brands
“In HTP 27,300 people work now. A significant cluster has been already built; I guess even the leading one in Eastern European in terms of IT specialists’ concentration per square kilometer. Due to HTP, we have developed a unique environment, where not only service companies appeared, but the products that operate in the consumer segment and are known throughout the world. World of Tanks, Viber, MSQRD, Maps.me is a good result. When in a small country there are brands, about which the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and Business Week write is a strong reaction.”
Belarusian programmers is a brand
“As in any mature industry, in IT there are people with different levels of skills and competence as directors of tasks, business analysts, project managers, team leads, programmers, so there is a more modest professionals: web designers, testers, and so on. But it is impossible to build a jumbo jet, car, or to launch a satellite, if you don not have people from different directions and with different skills. Now, if to go to Germany or the United States, we can see that Belarusian IT professionals are known, and it is a brand in Silicon Valley, for example.”
2/3 of the total national exports to the US
“We have quite a lot of American company residents in the Park. By the way, last year exports to the US exceeded 400 million USD. When I worked there, I didn’t think we would ever have at least several million dollars of exports to the United States. Now HTP gives 2/3 of the total national exports in the United States. We can certainly be proud that successfully work in the toughest and most competitive global market segments.”
A programmer is twelve times profitable than an entrepreneur
“We paid taxes worth 50 million USD last year, not counting indirect taxes, which amounted to about 100 million. Today people often talk about the preferential system in the IT industry, which is point at issue, because there are more favorable business areas. The average employee of the HTP enterprise pays tax four times larger in volume than the average worker of the Belarusian company. As for social security, the HTP employee pays as much in social insurance as 12 private entrepreneurs. For the country as a whole it is much more advantageous to have a large amount of revenue, strong reputation , high employment arte, get more taxes than to have none of all these.”
Engineers create the national wealth
“It is necessary to train more professionals for the sectors that are experiencing growth. Education is the same concept of the market as the production of phones or cars. Education system must adapt to the needs of the market.
With all due respect to financiers, bankers and lawyers, engineers are those who create the national wealth. Thanks to engineers, money comes into the country, and lawyers and financiers only distribute the cash.
When you have IT education, you can get everything young people dream about, namely three things: worthy reward for his or her labor, favorable conditions of work in the office and the ability to travel abroad.”
According to tut.by