February 15, Minsk /Andrei Asfura - BELTA/. The Republican Nanotechnology Industry Association has been established in Belarus, a BELTA correspondent reports from the association's constituent assembly.
About 20 Belarusian organisations have become members of the nanotechnology industry association. Among them are the Institute of Heat and Mass Transfer, the Institute of Physical Organic Chemistry, the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, the NAS of Belarus Scientific and Practical Centre for Materials Science, the Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics, the Belarusian National Technical University, etc. Private enterprises have also become members of the association.
The association has been established with the aim of coordinating research, innovation and entrepreneurial activities in the field of nanotechnology. The organisation's activities will be aimed at disseminating information about the results of the work of enterprises within the association and popularising their achievements. In addition, the association will represent and protect the common property and non-property interests of its members.
Sergei Chizhik, Deputy Chairman of the Presidium of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, noted that Belarus needs to focus on the development of new promising industries, particularly the bio- and nanotechnology sectors. "The unification of enterprises into an association will allow for the establishment of horizontal ties, more effective defence of interests and the solution of pressing issues facing organisations involved in the development of nanotechnology," he explained.
The Nanotechnology Industry Association will, to a certain extent, serve as a platform for communication where promising ideas in the field of nanotechnology will be discussed and developed. The Belarusian association plans to establish cooperation with a similar structure in Russia – the National Nanotechnology Industry Association.
First Deputy Minister of Economy Anatoly Filonov, in turn, emphasised that today's meeting is fateful for the republic, as a fundamentally new sector of the economy is being created in Belarus. Since the capacities of the petrochemical complex, many machine-building enterprises, and the Belarusian Steel Works are currently limited, it is necessary to form new high-tech sectors of the economy.