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Stern (6.35 Mbytes) | |
Title: Promoting Investment in Information and Communication Technologies in the Caribbean | ||
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Malkin (4.3 Mbytes) | |
Title: Education, Science and Technology in Latin America and the Caribbean: A statistical compendium of indicators | ||
Related Research Items
| A focus on Caribbean ICT investment and S&T policies |
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| Written by Amy Mahan | |
| Wednesday, 28 June 2006 | |
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ICT infrastructure matters. So does investment. Despite sector reforms across the Caribbean, both have had very uneven growth during the past decade. The IADB report, Promoting Investment in ICT in the Caribbean (May 2006), sets as its objectives to identify regulatory barriers and to make recommendations for further promotion of the ICT sector.
The report, written by Peter A. Stern, begins with a review of the telecom sector reform in the different countries of the region. It is a varied picture of uneven progress. Most of the countries surveyed have effected basic sector reform and some introduction of competition – with about six nations still lacking competition in local fixed line services. Like reform, access to the network is also uneven (which is “bank speak” for some successes and some miserable failures). In the CARICOM states, fixed line penetration varies from 1.7% in Haiti to 50.1% in Barbados; mobile ranges from 4.7% in Haiti to 82.2% in Jamaica. Looking at the map and basic indicators (population, GDP) clearly there are some affordability issues here, a total lack of any economies of scale, and conditions which create natural geographical monopolies for these small island states that have been difficult to overcome. The example of fibre optic submarine cables is a case in point – there are 20 of these throughout the Caribbean, of which 14 serve the region (the other four have landing points in the Caribbean, but serve other regions). The cables are of varying capacity – but there is a combined total of 70 Gbps of those available to Caribbean users. But, not all countries have equal access – in fact, more than half of the countries only have access to one cable; and countries that have access to more than one cable tend to have allocated all landing licences to a single operator (only Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands have competition at this level). The result of this bottleneck is limited access, which combined with a lack of competition results in higher bandwidth costs. Stern, however, tackles these issues entirely through the lens of regulation and regulatory conditions. The report emphasises recommendations for and solutions that will result from a more healthily regulated sector. Regulatory impediments to investment fall into two categories:
Section II of the report, Country Overviews, assesses the countries individually (some smaller economies are grouped together as are the OECS states). The case studies do not follow a particular model, but traverse and highlight the particular elements that are important to each. Sections III and IV round out this picture, in terms of regional issues and initiatives and ICT infrastructure in the Caribbean. In depth information is provided in all of these sections. Section V, Regulatory Barriers to Investment uses examples from the Caribbean – but applies insight that is more widely relevant and should be read by every recently established regulator, and should be of interest to all regulators. Stern, for example, poses nines questions to assess and determine a regulator’s independence and impartiality. Further, the Stern observes that the WTO Reference Paper only commits governments to independence from operators and service providers and other market players, whereas for newly established regulators there is often the problem or the perception (by investors) that regulatory agencies lack independence from the government that created them. The six recommendations for reducing regulatory barriers to investment are all in the vein of strengthening regulatory frameworks, practices and improving access to resources. These overarching recommendations are concretised in two project proposals: Project I – Establish a permanent framework for regional collaboration in ICT
Project II – Initiate and support the establishment of a regional non-commercial highspeed research and education network in the Caribbean. Given the focus of these recommendations on investment in human capital resources and development of education and research facilities, there is difficult road to climb. A second IADB report, Education, Science, and Technology in Latin American and the Caribbean: A Statistical Compendium of Indicators, also published in May 2006 confirms that education (at all levels) in LAC is still very much “uneven” and further is not sufficiently documented in a systematic way for effective policy planning by governments in the region. The report is proffered as “a first step in positioning the Inter-American Development Bank as a focal point of information on knowledge-related activities in its borrowing member countries.” A progression of indicators are provided for LAC across the three most important areas of the emerging knowledge economy: education, science and technology (S&T), and information and communication technology (ICT) and benchmarks this performance against that of other advanced and developing countries. Promoting Investment in Information and Communication Technologies in the Caribbean Both reports are available for free download from the from the column on the right of this page or from the Inter-American Development Bank’s publications page:
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