Cluj Innovation City, a EUR 300mln project of Cluj IT Cluster, kicks off with consultancy selection process

The project will occupy a surface of 202 hectares in the Lomb area of Cluj-Napoca. The land was placed at the disposal of the Cluj IT Cluster by the Cluj City Hall. The total investment into the project is estimated at approximately EUR 300 million, with the financing being insured from mixed sources.

“Recently, we have made the necessary steps to enter Cluj Innovation City on the list of the main national investment programs, so that during the next multi-annual financial framework for 2014- 2021, it will be possible to access European funds via programs for regional development and competitive growth. Another important step in making Cluj Innovation City happen is to start the procedure for the selection of consultancy companies, for which we are targeting experts from the most important international companies, to carry out the pre-feasibility and feasibility studies,” said Alexandru Tulai, president of Cluj IT Cluster.

Cluj Innovation City will be realized via a public-private partnership, being a community project in which the management is from private sources while the infrastructure will be carried out with the help of the government, the Cluj County Council and the Cluj Local Council.

Apart from Cluj Innovation City, the Cluj IT Cluster submitted a project for financing as part of the Sectoral Operational Programme Increase of Economic Competitiveness.

The cluster applied for EUR 1.2 million financing to develop four own projects that can already be marketed and other twelve projects that are in design stage. Following the evaluation, the project was declared eligible, and the financing will be soon granted.

”The project has a significant research and innovation component, 12 software projects having been proposed at design stage, and more importantly, other four will be developed up to the marketable stage, with application in healthcare, agriculture and acquisitions,” said Andrei Kelemen (in picture), executive director of Cluj IT Cluster (in picture).

A third direction of the Cluj IT Cluster will be to provide training in software and soft skills. In this sense, a pilot program is expected to start the next month, to increase the degree of innovation among companies that are members in the cluster and for cost efficiency reasons.

”The first project, a pilot one, which will help us test some collaboration mechanisms, will start in April and at the moment there are about 20 people from companies that are members in the cluster have subscribed, and will tale place in the .NET technology,” said Kelemen.

Cluj IT cluster was set up in October 2012 and has 30 IT member companies, 3 higher learning institutions- The Cluj-Napoca Technical University, The Babes-Bolyai University and The Cluj University of Agriculture Sciences and Veterinarian Medicine- 8 public institutions and several catalyst organizations.

The cluster aims to make Cluj a regional innovation hub. The second edition of the Cluj Innovation Days gathered 400 participants from Romania and abroad- public authorities, members of the European Commission, business people and representatives of the cluster. Speakers at the event included EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Dacian Ciolos, mayor of Cluj-Napoca, Emil Boc, president of the Cluj County Council Horia Uioreanu, Minister Delegate for Research Mihnea Costoiu, Minister for Social Dialogue Aurelia Cristea and Cluj prefect Gheorghe Vuscan. (source: business-review.eu)