Prime Min­is­ter of Grena­da, Dick­on Mitchell, is set to lead a re­view of the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions en­vi­ron­ment in the re­gion. Mitchell is Lead Head of Gov­ern­ment with re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Sci­ence and Tech­nol­o­gy in the CARI­COM Qua­si Cab­i­net.

Along with David Burt, who is the Pre­mier of Bermu­da, Mitchell will sup­port Mia Mot­t­ley, Prime Min­is­ter of Bar­ba­dos and Chair of CARI­COM, to re­view the sec­tor’s en­vi­ron­ment, with a view to cre­at­ing a com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment where cus­tomers and providers are treat­ed fair­ly.

Ad­dress­ing the me­dia at the end of the 48th Reg­u­lar Meet­ing of the Con­fer­ence of Heads of Gov­ern­ment of CARI­COM, Mot­t­ley re­ferred to the an­nu­al bil­lion-dol­lar earn­ings of some com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­forms and ser­vices from which the re­gion does not ben­e­fit eco­nom­i­cal­ly.

“We were in­formed that (these en­ti­ties) earn as much as $11.6B a year and they pay no tax­es. There is no con­tri­bu­tion in any way to the re­gion­al econ­o­my, and at the same time, the ab­sence of rev­enue to the telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions firms means that at the very time that we need to be look­ing at re-in­vest­ment to make our telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions in­fra­struc­ture stur­dier, it is not there,” the chair stat­ed.

“We are at the stage of ex­plo­ration, but Pre­mier Burt and Prime Min­is­ter Mitchell will work with me to be able to put the Com­mu­ni­ty in a po­si­tion to be able to bet­ter lev­el the play­ing field to en­sure that there is fair­ness to the con­sumer, fair­ness to the provider and a com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment. We are con­scious that the Caribbean, as a re­gion of small states, has high­er telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion costs than we would nor­mal­ly like to see as com­pared to oth­er re­gions,” Mot­t­ley said.