MINSK, 7 June (BelTA) – Belarus' successes in the development of its IT sector is important for the entire world, Mohamed Ali Alabbar, Managing Director of the Emirati company Emaar Properties, said as he met with Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko in Minsk on 7 June, BelTA has learned.
Mohamed Ali Alabbar thanked the Belarusian head of state for the meeting and warm welcome: “Thank you very much for the special hospitality you offer. This hospitality is not even towards an ordinary guest, but a friend and brother. It always touches my heart.”
“This hospitality is relative however. You have been here for a long time; in fact, you can already be considered a citizen of Belarus,” Aleksandr Lukashenko replied.
In his turn, Mohamed Ali Alabbar highly appreciated the state support of the IT sector in Belarus: “What you have done is important for the world. Back then you paid a lot of attention to the High-Tech Park, and at that time it was just the beginning. Today we see that technology drives the development of the entire world. If we take the population of Belarus and correlate it with the development of IT services that the country exports, this will be much higher in comparison with many Western countries,” the Arab investor said.
In his words, the key factor for successful development of the IT industry is people and quality education. “Both are available in Belarus, which is very important for technology development,” said the head of the company. He explained that he also owns one of the largest e-commerce platforms for the Arab world and therefore imports a lot of technology. After negotiations with HTP Director Vsevolod Yanchevsky Mohamed Ali Alabbar understood that Belarusian companies could bring many new and useful things to the e-commerce site, which would increase its added value.