National ICT Strategic Plan Government of St Kitts and Nevis Building the Information Infrastructure Telecommunications in St Kitts and Nevis St Kitts and Nevis was for many years dependent on the Sugar Industry. This industry has now come to an end and St Kitts and Nevis is actively seeking to diversify. One of the main areas that we have been looking to develop, are information-based industries including data entry, data manipulation, data conversion, information processing, and information management. St Kitts and Nevis has many advantages which would support the development of such activities including a strong affinity to North America, a common language and time zone, relatively easy and quick access from the USA and Canada, a basic core of highly skilled professionals, wages which may be high with respect to other centers of outsourcing but are nevertheless lower than those in the USA and Canada, and some experience already gained in information based industries. In addition, there is an important Kittitan and Nevisian Diaspora, living mainly in the USA, Canada, the United Kingdom and to a lesser extent in France and the Netherlands which has the skills and the wealth, which can be tapped to support the development of dynamic Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in the country. This section of the report focuses on the infrastructure necessary to deliver ICT services such as e-government, e-learning, and e-health to the citizens of St Kitts and Nevis and to facilitate ecommerce among its people and businesses. The high prices that users have to pay for international calling, Internet use, and leased lines have been the single most important obstacle to developing an information-based industry in St Kitts and Nevis. This impacts not only the traditional industries such as tourism and agriculture which depend on communications to market and sell their services and goods but also the new information-based sectors where high costs affect Caribbean firms’ ability to compete effectively internationally. There is a large potential for developing a variety of information-based services in St Kitts and Nevis from the fairly basic (mainly outbound calling) through the more sophisticated (customer care and technical support) call centre services to the more highly specialized network services. For these, however, the costs of communication to and from and within St Kitts and Nevis including the cost of leased lines and the conditions attached to their use remain a significant barrier to further developing Ministry of Finance, Sustainable Development, Information and Technology November, 2006 15