Azerbaijan, Baku / corr Trend S.Babayeva / The implementation of the Regional Innovation Zone project, aimed at the production and subsequent export of information products in Azerbaijan, will enable the country to gain income from the IT sector in the amount of $4bln by 2012, Ali Abbasov, the Azerbaijani Minister for Communications and Information Technologies, said on 21 November to the 13th International Exhibition and Conference on 'Telecommunications and Information Technologies BakuTel 2007'.
"Between 2015 and 2020, income from the Regional Innovation Zone will be equal to the current level of oil revenues," the Minister predicted.
Approximately thirty percent of the participants in BakuTel 2007 were Azerbaijani companies. This year, 142 companies from 25 different countries participated in the show and the venue was extended by fifteen percent compared to the previous year. Twenty-seven percent of the companies participating in the exhibition were entering the market for the first time.
According to the Minister, over the past five years, income from the communications sector in Azerbaijan has grown by thirty percent. In this time, the number of mobile phone subscribers has risen by four times, and internet users by three times.
Included within the agenda of the exhibition was a conference on 'regional innovation zones: problems and solutions', which were directed at intensifying the implementation of a project to create technical business parks in Azerbaijan.