SCIENCE INTENSIVE ECONOMY AND INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGIES PROMISING AREAS IN ARMENIA

/ARKA/
December 1, 2009
YEREVAN

YEREVAN, December 1. /ARKA/. The science intensive economy and
innovative technologies are promising areas in Armenia, Vache
Kirakosyan, chief of Armenian economy ministry’s information
technologies division, said Monday at Novosti International Press
Center.

He said the government attaches importance to the venture conferences
in Armenia.

"These venture conferences create certain environment for development
of a new culture at companies and lay groundwork for introduction of
new technologies and innovations."

The ministry welcomes all the companies taking part in the
conferences and is happy about the growing number of participants,
ideas and solutions in engineering, biotechnologies and pharmaceutics,
Kirakosyan said.

The third venture conference will be held in Yerevan on December 2
as part of STEP science and business technologies program.

Fourteen investment programs worked out on the grants intended
for supporting development of business-science cooperation will be
presented at the conference.

Of them, five best programs will be selected to receive $15,000 each
in grants.

This is the third conference the ministry holds jointly with Enterprise
Incubator Foundation and the U.S. Civilian Research and Development
Foundation (CRDF).

Four of CIS member countries – Armenia, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine –
are included in the CRDF project.

Under this project, three programs were funded in Armenia.

Each of these programs cost $5,000.

In 2008, four companies were announced winners, and each of them
received $7,500.

It was decided in 2009 to enlarge the number of winners to five and
the sum of the prize to $15,000 for each winner.