THE AMERICAN-based IBM company apparently will not make its planned mega-investment in Slovakia. Earlier this year it was announced that the firm would employ 3,000 people within three years in either Košice or Žilina.
“At the beginning of summer the company stopped the negotiations with us as well as with the Slovak Investment and Trade Development Agency (SARIO),” an employee of the US embassy in Slovakia told the Hospodárske Noviny daily.
SARIO neither confirmed nor denied that information. Its spokesperson, Richard Dírer, told Hospodárske Noviny that negotiations have not been closed because IBM’s representatives have not informed the agency about a final decision one way or the other.
The spokesperson for Košice’s city hall, Martina Viktorinová, was also reluctant to comment on whether negotiations had been broken off with IBM regarding an investment in her city.
Hospodárske Noviny wrote that Slovakia was not the only country competing for the investment. Originally, the competition included Poland and Egypt and IBM had chosen Egypt only to later abandon the entire idea after the insurgency in that country.
The daily hinted that that the investment could be going to Poland based on certain information published in Polish newspapers.