(CARICOM Secretariat, Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown,
Guyana) The World Bank on Wednesday presented a
programme to the Caribbean that would support
initiatives for improved Information Communication
Technologies (ICTs) within the Caribbean Forum of
African Caribbean and Pacific States (CARIFORUM).
The project concept for the Caribbean Regional
Communications Infrastructure Programme (CARCIP) was
officially presented to the region at a workshop at
the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Centre in St. Michael,
Barbados. The workshop, which opened on 17 November,
was held at the conclusion of the Fifth Meeting of
the Regional Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) Steering Committee.
The World Bank was engaged in bi-lateral
discussions with various countries, but only on
Wednesday officially disclosed the project to a
wider regional grouping.
CARCIP is designed as a broad umbrella programme
to include all CARIFORUM Member States. It will be
anchored within the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM)
ICT agenda and will be closely coordinated with the
Caribbean Knowledge and Learning Network (CKLN), the
Caribbean Tourism Organisation (CTO), the Caribbean
Association of National Telecommunication
Organizations (CANTO), the Caribbean
Telecommunications Union (CTU), the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU) and other initiatives
in the region.
Among the proposed objectives are to increase
access and affordability of broadband communications
networks within the region and countries; contribute
to the development of the regional Information
Technology (IT) industry; and contribute to improved
government efficiency and transparency through the
delivery of e-services, including e-government and
e-society applications.
Lead ITC Specialist, Global Information and
Communication Technologies Department, World Bank,
Mr. Juan Navas-Sabater, said that the programme was
an integrated one that was centred on three pillars:
infrastructure, building national IT industries, and
the delivery of electronic services.
While it was proposed as a broad umbrella
initiative to include all CARIFORUM countries, the
programme would be tailored to the needs and
interests of each country, he said.
“Once the countries express, formally, interest
in being part of the CARCIP, we would finance the
specific activities with different financing
mechanisms,” he said.
Those financing mechanisms, he said, included
loans through the World Bank, grants that it could
mobilise through other international development
partners, and public/private partnership
investments.
The World Bank’s Lead IT Specialist said that
following a formal expression of interest by a
CARIFORUM Member State, the Bank would field a team
of experts to design the country programme.
He said that he anticipated that the workshop in
Barbados would provide a glimpse of those areas in
which Member States were interested, so that the
experts could begin to tailor the specific
components.
He said that the feedback the Bank had received
in its initial consultations were generally
positive.
“Most of the countries were very interested; they
understand the need. There was a sense that the
financial crisis was still looming, so some Member
States felt that they needed to think carefully
about debt. But at this stage, I think they see it
more as an instrument of being ready for future
shocks and having this kind of infrastructure in
place would help them weather the storms much
better,” Navas-Sabater said.