President Rosen Plevneliev invited leading global IT companies to become partners in developing the concept and implementation of Sofia Tech Park. On the third day of his official visit to the United States, President Plevneliev visited the headquarters of Cisco, Google, HP, as well as a NASA research centre in Silicon Valley. The President received the support of American business, which will share its experience in creating the Bulgarian platform for entrepreneurship and innovation in information and communication technology.

“In Bulgaria there are many talented and well-trained professionals and we should enable them to implement their ideas and so to stay in Bulgaria, not to work for other companies elsewhere in the world,” the President told Bulgarian journalists in San Jose. He said that innovative platform Sofia Tech Park is financially backed by 50 million euro through the Competitiveness Operation Programme. For such a project to be successful, however, all institutions, municipalities, NGOs and businesses should be partners, President Plevneliev said.

The President expects that within a month, the Government will make a decision on providing land for construction of the complex in the capital. The Ministry of Economy and Energy will establish a company to be a beneficiary of the funds under the programme, to enable financing to begin, and within three months the whole concept is expected to be ready, the President said. He said that this year strategic partners would be available who would be able to start training of specialists, and at the end of 2015, offices, a technology centre and museum of technology that will bear the name of John Atanasoff would be ready.

Later, the President held a meeting in Los Gatos with representatives of the Bulgarian community in San Francisco and San Jose. During his visit, the founding of a new Bulgarian school, named Khan Asparouh, in San Jose was announced, as well as a Bulgarian chamber of commerce that will operate in northern California. The President said that in 10 years, Bulgaria will be a completely different country and Bulgarians abroad should participate in this change. “This is the Bulgaria of entrepreneurship, high-tech industries and high added value and we should all work towards it,” President Plevneliev told the Bulgarians in San Jose.