Caribbean investors will later this month have the opportunity to network and explore new investment options in information and communication technology when NovaTech2005 - an EU-funded project that aims to promote investment in the ICT sector and e-businesses services in the Caribbean - opens its 2005 Caribbean conference.

From October 25 to 27, potential investors from the EU and the Caribbean region will come together in the Dominican Republic for the three-day conference, with European companies such as Alcatel Space, Cegetel, Lintel, Blue Tech, Urbitec Networks, Axalto and
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) seeking to explore regional opportunities.

By attending the conference, says NovaTech2005's regional consultant Julian Robinson, Caribbean investors and entrepreneurs with ICT projects can benefit from valuable assistance in terms of matchmaking, funding, and accessing markets for their services. A further incentive, Robinson added, was that if a match is found for a company, NovaTech2005 will facilitate getting the partnership off the ground by contributing up to euro100,000 for activities such as feasibility studies. After the conference in October, NovaTech2005 will provide support to a select number of investment ventures to help them start operations.

"Within the last five years, the Caribbean has emerged as an attractive location for investment in the ICT industry, partly because of the liberalisation of the telecommunications industry in many islands," said Robinson, making the conference a timely one. Indeed, the recent liberalisation of the telecoms market in many countries of the region has fuelled vibrant competition in the Caribbean especially in the wireless cellular market, where Digicel, an Irish firm, has aggressively established itself as the main competitor to Cable & Wireless and has become the dominant player in some of the countries.

Still, the major impacts on the industry have been in the high levels of new investments that have accompanied the building of cellular and other telecoms infrastructure and the reduction in cost for both voice and data services. In Jamaica, for example, close to US$1 billion has been spent by the major telecoms firms over the last four years in building out and upgrading their telecoms infrastructure.

Business in the outsourcing market has also attracted significant investment and high growth levels due to the opportunity for overseas companies to achieve cost reduction and efficiency. According to the Zagada Institute's Caribbean Call Centre Report 2005, the contact centre market grew from 11,154 agents employed in November 2002, to just over 23,000 as of December 2004. Since much of that business was channelled from the US market, Robinson is hoping that the NovaTech2005 project will generate business from Europe in several areas such as software development, wireless networking, telemedicine and e-learning.

NovaTech is a project of the CDE-managed programme PROINVEST (www.proinvest-eu.org) funded by the European Commission. Persons interested in attending the conference can contact julianjrobinson@yahoo.com or visit the Proinvest website. Registration is free.

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