By Anthony O. Miller
CYPRUS and Russia yesterday launched an ambitious joint venture to develop state-subsidised high-tech industries on the island in emulation of America’s ‘silicon valley’, Commerce, Industry & Tourism Minister Nicos Rolandis said.The formal kick-off occurred in a meeting in his office yesterday with Russian Ambassador Georgy Muratov, Rolandis said.”The plan is — this is not, of course, exclusive for Russia — that Cyprus entrepreneurs will co-operate with Russian scientists in the field of high technology… so that we can produce the inventions and the products that we are aiming at,” he said.”We are not limiting the spectrum at all; it’s open-ended. There could be ventures in whatever (telecommunications, medicine, electronics, computers) as far as we consider it to be high- technology,” Rolandis said.Cyprus and Russia plan to hold a seminar in Moscow sometime in October or November: “We shall do something similar in the case of Israel as well, at which we shall try to introduce our own businessmen to the Russian scientists, or the Israeli scientists,” he said.Rolandis said he expects to receive applications emerging from these seminars by the end of this year, or early 2000. Applicants, either foreign entrepreneurs or corporations, will apply to a committee that will include members from a number of ministries, he said.Those applications that are approved will receive a Cyprus government subsidy to locate in “the incubator” of industrial research parks on the island.”The plans are to establish a whole industry of high technology, along the lines of Silicon Valley,” Rolandis said. “If we work correctly, after a few years high- technology will take over the traditional industry (of Cyprus), because this is the industry of the future.””Russia, I believe, will be the main participant in this programme.” It has the advantage, the minister said, in that “they have the know-how, but they lack the marketing arm. Cyprus, for them, is an excellent choice to pursue high-technology.””The high- technology of Israel was created in exactly the same way: Russian Jews who emigrated from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s to some extent created the high-tech industries of Israel,” Rolandis said. “So essentially we are repeating the exercise.””I think that with the contribution of Russian scientists, and scientists of other countries — and probably the US and Cypriots abroad who are interested… we shall manage to build a high-tech industry” in Cyprus, he said.Rolandis said he had already discussed the plan with Israel and received expressions of interest. “Of course, the difference between Israel and Russia, is Israel is quite advanced already” in high-tech manufacture.
