Bill Gates announces his plans for Poland during visit

This will be the third such institute in Europe and initially will employ 40 people, but over time this will grow to 200. The center's employees would not work on developing the company's commercial products like Windows or Office but would rather concentrate on servicing applications used internally in Microsoft's branches across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Gates said Poland can be proud of its IT specialists, "IT is nowadays the growth engine for Eastern European economies and Microsoft is planning long-term investments in that region," said Gates. Financial details of the investment were not revealed. Microsoft is also to open five training centers in Poland. (Puls Biznesu, p. 4; Parkiet, p. 1; Gazeta Wyborcza, p. 24) D.W.