4. Information & Communication Technology & the nation
Box 4.3: "The future according to 'Don' René" Don René, as everyone calls him here, is an unusual character. An UNCTAD expert, he travels the world with the single idea that increases in the planet s trade should contribute to the well-being of all and to progress and peace. Hence Don René s enthusiasm to seize the opportunity offered by UNCTAD with its creation of a world network of Trade
Points. The Trade Point at Cochabamba gives foreigners direct access to goods such as sumptuous alpaca pullovers woven by Indian women from the wool of llamas raised by many Indian farmers living precariously on the Andean Altiplano. This truly social, communal enterprise provides work for one thousand people.
Source: UNCTAD.
roughly half have e-mail. CNI first began using the Internet in 1994. It saw how the Internet was affecting business practice (e.g., e-mail replacing fax, e-commerce) and in 1997 it launched a web site. Their web site, which is hosted in the United States, gets over 60 000 hits a year of which 90 per cent come from outside Bolivia. The most visited part of the web site is the members directory. It also hosts some members web pages for free. CNI thinks that Bolivian industry is the only sector today that can carry out e-commerce from a practical point of view since it produces a tangible product. Some of its members have established trading relationships through the Internet. CNI members have listed the following barriers to a web presence: (1) lack of knowledge; (2) antiquated computers with no modems; and (3) lack of involvement by the country s ISPs.
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There is an informal national task force on e-commerce led by the Vice-President s office whose members include the chambers of commerce and industry, the national telecom regulator and main operator and others. The exact composition and mandate of this group remains vague. Communications infrastructure and cost With a little over six telephone lines per 100 inhabitants, Bolivia has the second lowest telephone density in South America. This is a major impediment to e-commerce since the vast majority of Internet users in the country use dial-up access. While mobile density (5.2 per cent) is almost as high as fixed (spurred by a competitive market and wide spread availability of prepaid cards), it is not a viable platform in the short run for e-commerce due to a number of technical and economic reasons. As of May 2000, there were around 30 000 Internet subscribers in Bolivia and an estimated user base of just under 100 000. While these figures are growing, they represent only a small portion of the country (less than
The Vice-Ministry of Industry and Internal Commerce of the Ministry of Economic Development is responsible for industry and trade. It has Internet access and an e-mail address but no web site of its own (some pages about the vice ministry are hosted on the main ministry web site). Instead, several of its agencies have established web sites including UMA, OBA, INBOPIA, and SENAPI. The vice-ministry put forth the following factors affecting the development of e-commerce in Bolivia: · ·
There is a shortage of content in Spanish, Uncertainty regarding the security and confidentiality of transactions, No legal norms that deal specifically with e-commerce, Domain names and trademarks on the Internet need to be protected, Intellectual property protection, Improvement of information availability regarding patents.
The Internet is an incipient activity due to its high cost and therefore lack of mass access, There is a lack of awareness of the Internet,
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