World Bank's $75m Towards Dominica's Digital Economy Will 'Transform Lives', Minister Says

LONDON, Aug. 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The World Bank will provide the Commonwealth of Dominica with US$75 million to assist in transformation of the country's digital economy. Honourable Cassani Laville, the Minister for Digital Economy, said that the way business is conducted will improve in Dominica in a government statement on August 11th.

The Government of Dominica introduced the Ministry of Digital Economy to synchronise the island with the way the world has been utilising modern technology, according to the statement. Minister Laville explained that an improved digital economy would mean the reduction of the cost of citizen transactions though the internet.

"There is a regional component of this project that is heavily based on cybersecurity and telecommunications," he said. "There is a component for health, there is a component for education, for travel facilitation, for tourism; there are attendant benefits for businesses, for young entrepreneurs, for education, for support to the private sector, for E-Government, for digitisation and digitalisation. So there are tremendous benefits across the board to see that transformation of the way that we conduct business," Minister Laville added.

"We are going to see travel facilitation with tourism transformed. We are going to find that businesses are able to access greater markets, and we are not only restricted by the numbers in Dominica but we are going to see that we can access the six billion people around the world," he said.

In June, the World Bank provided Dominica with US$16.4 million with which farmers received equipment. Agriculture, food security, the country's climate resilience initiative, and economic recovery from COVID-19 were also supported.

Dominica's Citizenship by Investment (CBI) Programme also plays a role in funding public and private sectors. In a webinar with Dubai-based newspaper Khaleej Times, Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit said that Dominica finances its post-pandemic recovery "through a combination of loans, government revenue, including CBI funds, and reduction in recurrent expenditure."

The CBI Programme attracts substantial funds from trustworthy sources and has ranked best in the world for the last three issues of the CBI Index, a report published annually by the Financial Times' PWM magazine. The researchers commend Dominica's focus on integrity and transparency. CBI funding has had a tangible impact on broad aspects of life, as noted in a PricewaterhouseCoopers report. However, only the most vetted investors can qualify for Dominica's prestigious citizenship.

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SOURCE CS Global Partners