Jamaica, Barbados, and Trinidad & Tobago
are among the Caribbean countries that been working to build up their informatics
sectors.
Over the last nine years, Jamaica has been able to attract a number of firms that
have created just under 10,000 informatics jobs, says Calvin Brown, marketing director
for the Montego Bay Free Trade Zone, where much of this activity takes place.
The key, says Brown, was the formation of Jamaica Digiport International, an $8.5
million venture between AT&T, Cable & Wireless, and Telecommunications of
Jamaica, which offers rates that are competitive with U.S. rates.
As a result, Air Jamaica took its data processing unit from Pennsylvania back
to Jamaica, says Verona Smith, marketing director for JDI. Other on-island firms
have had contracts with Blue Cross/Blue Shield, United Healthcare and American Express,
among others, she added.
Rates are improving elsewhere in the Caribbean. Special competitively-priced rates
are often available to "bona-fide" informatics or other telecom-dependent
industries, and even where no such formal incentives exist, special rates are commonly
negotiated for large customers.
That's even the case in monopoly or near-monopoly telecom markets. Officials report
that Cable & Wireless, the dominant private carrier in much of the region, has
become increasingly cooperative because it recognizes the economic importance of
developing the informatics industry in the region.
Some 3,500 informatics jobs are already scattered throughout the Eastern Caribbean
(including Anguilla, Antigua, British Virgin Islands, Dominica, Grenada, St. Kitts
& Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Montserratt). With heavy
regional promotional efforts underway, this number is expected to surge upwards.
Tiny St. Lucia wants to snare 700 jobs by the year 2000, while the Eastern Caribbean
wants to double its job base in seven years.
Generous incentives
By granting incentives like 15-year corporate tax exemptions, duty-free imports,
zero restrictions on recapturing profits, among other incentives, St. Lucia hopes
to attract more companies like Palmer Lazar and Ulsh, which set up a data-processing
firm in February. The firm, whose main contractors are insurance and mortgage companies
in Pennsylvania, started with 35 employees, and plans to be up to 200 by year's end.
"These new guys are extremely pleased, I should say surprised, at the productivity
of the labor forces," added Edward Osborne, investment promotion officer for
the Eastern Caribbean Investment Promotional Service, a quasi-government agency promoting
economic development in the region.
In Barbados, a "significant rate reduction" was just announced in mid-June,
according to Dr. Lawson Nurse, the chief executive officer at the Barbados Industrial
Development Council.
The country, which has 2,950 informatics employees, also offers incentives such
as a 2.95 percent tax rate, office and training subsidies and a low-wage, highly-trained
work force. By concentrating on higher education and worker training initiatives,
Nurse said Barbados hopes to go more "upmarket" by increasing the number
of "value-added" informatics industries to the island. This would include
expanding on its current base of software development and map-imaging firms.
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