CARICOM region to benefit from ICT

THE CARICOM region is “quickly marching”, towards a regional arrangement that will see it have its own platform for Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).

And, according to Minister of Industry, International Business, Commerce and Small Business Development, Donville Inniss, “Barbados is fully on board, in this venture”.

He said: “We recognise the upstanding work of the Caribbean Telecommunications Union as well as the work of respective governments…

“Prime Minister [Keith] Mitchell of Grenada, at the Prime Ministerial level, has been leading the charge in this respect, as we believe we have to drive the costs of telecommunications downward, whilst at the same time expanding access within the region and the world out there.”

Inniss made these comments following a recent two-day trip to the Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) Ministerial Meeting in Georgetown, Guyana.

Asserting that Barbados needed to “take control” of its ICT development “a bit more”, Inniss emphasised that  it was recognised that “once these infra structural arrangements and administrative arrangements were solidified,” there was phenomenal growth that could take place in our economies that will flow from the work of ICT based enterprises. He noted that this would go a long way in making government far more “efficient and more cost effective to administer”.