Minister of Public Works and the Digital Economy, Honourable Cassani Laville says that Dominica and the Caribbean Region by extension needs to make the shift to the digital economy.
Minister Laville made that statement while addressing the third installment of a series of virtual symposiums hosted by the Ministry of Public Works and Digital Economy in collaboration with CREAD.
The five part series will discuss Dominica’s Digital Economy agenda as well as help businesses and citizens to benefit from digital tools and services.
Minister Laville noted that while the Government has already adopted this approach, there needs to be a cultural shift towards the digital economy.
“It is of no surprise that digital economy was widely accepted by regional and international leaders and stakeholders as one of the fundamental propellants of economic nourishment. Our Government has already adopted this as policy and we are committed to necessary investments but this is not enough. It certainly is not enough. As a matter of fact, it is far from enough. We need the entire population and region to accept the cultural shift towards digital economy transformation. We need to be honest about our insecurities and displace that with confidence. We must flirt with new ideas and opportunities; segue into realms of unexploited sectors; we must unleash our survival instincts and adapt as required. This will be hard but it is absolutely necessary,” he explained.
He added that Dominica is moving forward with the plan to meet with stakeholders and local entrepreneur to work on the challenges present so that the country can have move towards fully embracing the digital economy.
“The advantage we have is that we already know some new and existing opportunities. We recently heard some dynamic Dominican entrepreneurs who enlightened us on their experiences and opportunities. The plan therefore is to formalize and streamline all these ideas and experiences and action items from this symposium, and various stakeholder consultations that we compose and discordance into synchronized harmony so we can coin our digital strategy and we shall put in the work to succeed so that we can herald to the world that Dominica is at the zenith for we have embraced the opportunities of the digital economy,” Minister Laville added.