November 19 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria will increase its shareholding in the capital of state-owned technology park operator Sofia Tech Park through a cash contribution of a total of 3.8 million levs ($2.2 million/1.9 million euro), the caretaker government said.
The funds will go to cover operating costs, including costs for the maintenance of a supercomputer acquired last year, the caretaker government said in a statement earlier this week.
The economy ministry will increase its stake in the capital of Sofia Tech Park by 0.35% to 92.14% through the cash contribution, it said on Friday in response to a SeeNews inquiry.
According to commercial registry data, however, the economy ministry holds 89.19% in Sofia Tech Park and is the sole owner of State Consolidation Company which controls the remaining 10.81%.
In May, French IT group Atos said that it has fully delivered and assembled Bulgaria's new European High-Performance Computing Joint Undertaking (EuroHPC) supercomputer at Sofia Tech Park. "This will be the most powerful supercomputer in Eastern Europe and will help to leverage Bulgaria’s high-tech ambitions," Atos said at the time.
Last year, the European Commission said that the EuroHPC signed an 11.5 million euro ($13.0 million) deal to acquire a new supercomputing system in Bulgaria, to be capable of more than 4.4 petaflops. Atos was later selected by the EuroHPC and the consortium “Petascale Supercomputer Bulgaria” (PetaSC-Bulgaria) whose leading partner is Sofia Tech Park to build the petascale supercomputer.
Data published on the website of Sofia Tech Park shows that the petascale supercomputer, named Discoverer, was put into operation in October.
Sofia Tech Park was established with the aim to strengthen the competitiveness of science and entrepreneurship in Bulgaria by improving the knowledge exchange between academia and business, supporting startups and innovative ideas and thus catalysing the process of commercialisation of research.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)