China's Huawei to help Bulgaria become EU leader in IT services: official

China's telecom giant Huawei would help Bulgaria to become a leader in IT services in the European Union (EU), said Guo Ping, the company's rotating and acting CEO said on Tuesday.

Next year, Bulgaria will take over the Presidency of the Council of the EU, and furthermore, the country has been selected as one of the two pilot countries for the EU's e-government initiative, Guo said at the opening ceremony of a national summit on cloud computing.

"In this context, our mission is to ensure that Bulgaria will become a leader of the EU in this area," Guo said.

Huawei was also committed to supporting Bulgaria in its strategic efforts to become a regional cloud hub, Guo said.

"This will provide a huge boost to the local IT industry and also give EU companies access to the highest quality cloud services," Guo said.

Speaking about this particular event, jointly organized with the Confederation of Employers and Industrialists in Bulgaria and the national telecom giant Vivacom, Guo said it would help to explore the future of cloud services and how the cloud can help Bulgaria enter the intelligent world.

Emil Karanikolov, Bulgaria's Minister of Economy, said in turn that information and communication technologies and outsourcing have been among the leading sectors for attracting investments in his country.

Since 2013, investment projects worth over 1.049 billion U.S. dollars have been implemented in these areas, and over 7,400 jobs have been created, Karanikolov said.

The presence in Bulgaria of such a global company like Huawei, spoke well for the country's policies, he added.

Chinese Ambassador to Bulgaria Zhang Haizhou, who also attended the event, said it marked the beginning of a new stage in the development of cloud technologies in Bulgaria.

Huawei Technologies has been present in Bulgaria since 2004, and has been a major supplier for the telecom market in the country. Endit