Azerbaijan, Baku, 6 June/ corr. Trend S.Babayeva / "We have wide experience in designing programs such as 'People's Computer' in 60 countries of the world, and are prepared to assist Azerbaijan in this respect," Craig Barrett, the chairman of the board of directors of Intel corporation, said on 5 June.
"Our principle effort is to make computers available to entire population", he said.
According to Barrett, the Government sponsors the realization of such programs and projects, whilst the designer companies practically carry them out along with the cooperation of governmental organizations.
Ali Abbasov, the Azerbaijani minister for communications and information technology, said that during the meeting with an Intel top representative, who visited Azerbaijan on 5 June for the first time, the discussions focused on concrete directions of the corporation's participation in the 'People's computer' project in Azerbaijan. Abbasov did not reveal the details of the talks.
A special working group, comprising specialists of the Ministry, companies Intel and Microsoft, was established at the Communication and Information Technology Ministry to carry out this project.
This project is aimed at distributing computers among low-income people at long-term credits with low interest rate.
This proposal will be presented to the Government for its consideration, as soon as the terms of the project are coordinated.
The Ministry plans to realize this project as a pilot in one of the regions by the end of the year.
It is planned to sell about 10,000 computers to low-income people this year, and the variants to give computers to teachers and students at the initial stage are currently being examined.
This project is designed for 3 years, whereas some corrections are not ruled out. The total cost of this project is yet to be defined.
The Ministry said that at present each 100 people in Azerbaijan possess 5-7 computers in Azerbaijan, while the average figure worldwide amounts to 20-25. The number of internet users in the country reaches 1mln people, with only inconsiderable figure of 2-3% for regions.