The Bahamas may want to base the third pillar of its economy on e-commerce, but less than 30 per cent of households can participate, according to High Rock Member of Parliament Kenneth Russell.
He told the House of Assembly on Wednesday that the Bahamas Telecommunications Company (BTC) provides Internet services to about 14,400 households, and Cable Bahamas provides Internet services to 10,800 out of a total of 88,000.
“It is clear that not only the infrastructure of our communications and electrical companies has to be improved, but incentives must be put in place to encourage all households to connect to the world wide web,” he said.
The High Rock MP said the Government should keep in mind that as it moves the Bahamas toward e-commerce, those initiatives must be supported by strong off-line marketing and hardware, software, ISP, web developer, web hosting, corporate and government components.
According to Mr. Russell, if the Government is serious, it must establish a Bahamian brand of e-business by fostering private-sector leadership, accelerating the transformation of existing businesses by providing sectoral initiatives and foster e-business creation and growth, by focusing on research spending and level playing fields for capital markets.
Mr. Russell also outlined that the government must find realistic applications to focus upon in the e-commerce environment and said that the sale of jams, jellies, rum cakes and Junkanoo dolls cannot comprise the third pillow of the economy. He said that with the crash of dot-com companies, the U.S. capital market industry has $4 billion less liquidity it did 18 months ago.
By Tamara McKenzie, The Nassau Guardian
