The second day of the business mission from the Russian capital to Istanbul was dedicated to the theme of techno parks. The delegation of the Moscow Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the Government of Moscow visited the state technology park “Istanbul” and the private technology park “Martek”.
Today there are about fifty techno parks in Turkey. All of them are linked to universities, which allows assimilating the solutions of theoretical and applied tasks.
Today, the techno park “Istanbul” occupies the area of 100 thousand square meters, hosts 220 companies, 3,500 development engineers, implementing 1,000 projects in strategically important sectors of the country's economy. The plans are to increase the area to 650 thousand square meters by 2023, and the number of employees to up to 30 thousand people. According to the Deputy General Manager, Dr. Ismail Ari, the Turkish state actively supports techno parks. One of the most effective support measures is the complete exemption from personal income tax for researchers, who work for prospective government projects. In Turkey, there exists a progressive scale of taxation, reaching the discount of up to 45%, encouraging qualified personnel to deal with solving tasks facing the state.
“Martek”, a private technology park with a special economic zone designation, promotes the development of pharmaceutical, IT, electronics, machine building and automotive companies. The CEO of the techno park, Mr. Orkhan Chomlek, said that companies that are involved in providing intellectual services are also completely exempt from taxes.
For her part, the Deputy Head of the Department of Science, Industrial Policy and Entrepreneurship of the city of Moscow, Ms.Christina Volkonitskaya, presented the industrial potential of the capital of Russia and talked about the city authorities providing assistance for the residents of techno parks, in particular, regarding which benefits and preferences are being granted.
During their visits to techno parks, the members of the Moscow delegation met with representatives of a number of companies, in the activities of which the Russian capital is interested, and described to them the opportunities and prospects for their presence in Moscow. In addition, an agreement was reached on exchanging residents within the framework of cooperation on the site of the international association of techno parks, the IASP.
Summing up, the Vice-President of the MCCI, Mr. Suren Vardanyan, noted that a thorough, substantive discussion took place that enabled the parties to share specifics of establishing and developing techno parks, and to also reach an agreement for further, combined actions.