Belarus: Capitalism's Unlikely Frontier

摘要

French software startup Abaxia was hunting for an offshore research and development site in 2006 when one of its employees suggested taking a look at his native country, Belarus. "I had to get out an atlas to be sure where it was," recalls Ongan Mordeniz, Abaxia's R&D chief.rnToday, more than half of Abaxia's employees work in the former Soviet republic of 9.5 million, wedged between Russia and Poland on the EU's eastern rim. The company and two affiliates employ 85 engineers at a software development center in Minsk near the former Communist Party headquarters, which is now President Alexander Lukashenko's residence. They're among an estimated 10,000 professionals working for outsourcing operations in what is now the region's No. 3 country for such shops, behind Ukraine and Romania, according to the Central and Eastern European Outsourcing Assn.