BRDIGETOWN, Barbados, Advocate - To be competitive Barbadians need to embrace ICTs, as theycan significantly drive development in Barbados.

This was the suggestion made by Donville Inniss, Minister of Industry, International Business Commerce and Small Business Development yesterday at the Digicel Corporate Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Conference at the Hilton.

He made the point, “In order to compete in the global economy and maintain and surpass our current level of development, Barbados needs to shift to knowledge-based industries; those that are delivering the fastest growth rates globally. The cycle of technology development and implementation is accelerating. The number of Internet users worldwide continues to grow steeply. More than 50 per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in the major OECD economies is now based on the production and distribution of knowledge.

“The new and emerging information and communications technologies (ICTs) have created global markets for goods and services. The strong GDP of countries such as United States, Canada, Singapore and Malta is primarily due to the fact that these countries have encouraged their people, through education and life-long learning, and investing in research and development and information and communication services.