Thimphu TechPark Crosses the 700-people Direct Employment Target

Thimphu, 24 Feb. 2016. Thimphu TechPark Ltd., the developer and owner of Thimphu TechPark, the first IT Park of Bhutan, is pleased to announce that the IT Park has crossed the direct employment target of 700 people this month. As of today, there are 717 Bhutanese, mostly youths, working at the IT Park. We consider this very auspicious as we have reached this milestone in the same month as the Royal birth of His Royal Highness our beloved Gyalsey and His Majesty’s 36th Birthday.This has been made possible because of the support received from many quarters, especially from the stakeholders like the Department of IT and Telecom and the Ministry of Information and Communications, our shareholders Druk Holding & Investments and Bhutan Telecom Ltd., the World Bank, and last but not the least, the Royal Government of Bhutan.

We believe that the first IT Park reaching this milestone has clearly shown that the IT and IT Enabled Services industry hold a huge potential for helping Bhutan meet the dual challenges of youth unemployment and trade deficit which was recently reported to have reached Nu. 32.8 Billion last year.

The first IT Park of Bhutan was developed under a DBFOOT (Design, Build, Finance, Own, Operate, Transfer) Public Private Partnership model with funding support from the World Bank. The build phase was completed on 30 April 2012, and the operations phase started from May 2012. Initially, 74% of the shares of Thimphu TechPark Pvt. Ltd. was owned by a foreign company based in Singapore, Assetz Property Group (APG) and DHI owned the remaing 26%. In October 2014, APG transferred all of its shares to DHI and the name of the company was changed to Thimphu TechPark Ltd. Today, DHI holds 51% of the shares and Bhutan Telecom holds the remaining 49% of the shares in the company.