An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior mul­ti­me­dia re­porter

Re­port­ing from Pun­ta Cana,

Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic

Econ­o­mist Mar­la Dukha­ran says the pro­posed large-scale in­vest­ments in da­ta cen­tres and AI in­fra­struc­ture are like­ly to bring for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment and job cre­ation to T&T as well as po­si­tion the coun­try as a dig­i­tal hub. How­ev­er, she cau­tioned that pol­i­cy­mak­ers must care­ful­ly ex­am­ine the long-term costs and ben­e­fits.

Elec­tric­i­ty in T&T re­mains heav­i­ly sub­sidised, rais­ing ques­tions about whether tax­pay­ers are ef­fec­tive­ly sup­port­ing for­eign in­vest­ment projects through low en­er­gy prices. She ar­gued that any ma­jor in­vest­ments should de­liv­er clear na­tion­al ben­e­fits through knowl­edge trans­fer, tax rev­enues and broad­er eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

Re­source man­age­ment is an­oth­er con­cern. Da­ta cen­tres re­quire sub­stan­tial elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter sup­plies, at a time when T&T al­ready faces chal­lenges in en­er­gy avail­abil­i­ty and wa­ter re­li­a­bil­i­ty.

Dukha­ran stressed that care­ful plan­ning is need­ed to en­sure in­fra­struc­ture can sup­port these projects with­out plac­ing ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on pub­lic re­sources.

Her com­ments came in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Na­tion­al Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Or­gan­i­sa­tions’ (CAN­TO) 41st An­nu­al Con­fer­ence and Trade Ex­hi­bi­tion in Pun­ta Cana, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic on Wednes­day.

Dukha­ran said Ar­ti­fi­cial In­tel­li­gence (AI) readi­ness is an area where T&T sits in the mid­dle of the glob­al rank­ings, and in the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund’s AI Pre­pared­ness In­dex, the coun­try is rough­ly at the world av­er­age.

How­ev­er, she warned that Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean per­form poor­ly in key ar­eas need­ed for the AI econ­o­my, in­clud­ing cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty, net­work re­silience, tech­nol­o­gy lit­er­a­cy and big da­ta ca­pa­bil­i­ties.

The econ­o­mist said T&T is mak­ing strides in dig­i­tal readi­ness, but struc­tur­al weak­ness­es re­main.

Dukha­ran not­ed that T&T has built a rel­a­tive­ly strong dig­i­tal foun­da­tion when com­pared with many coun­tries in the Caribbean and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly.

Da­ta from the Unit­ed Na­tions Con­fer­ence on Trade and De­vel­op­ment (UNC­TAD) shows that T&T’s ICT (In­for­ma­tion and Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy) pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty was slight­ly above the glob­al av­er­age in 2024. The coun­try al­so ex­ceed­ed both Caribbean and glob­al av­er­ages for fixed broad­band pen­e­tra­tion in re­cent years.

Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions ser­vices re­main com­par­a­tive­ly af­ford­able. T&T’s me­di­an fixed broad­band costs are be­low the Caribbean av­er­age, while mo­bile da­ta prices are al­so low­er than those in many neigh­bour­ing ter­ri­to­ries. Mo­bile da­ta af­ford­abil­i­ty in T&T is above the re­gion­al av­er­age, plac­ing the coun­try among the stronger per­form­ers in the Caribbean.

E-gov­ern­ment ser­vices are an­oth­er area where T&T has made progress. Dukha­ran point­ed out that the coun­try ranks above the glob­al av­er­age in dig­i­tal gov­ern­ment adop­tion, along­side na­tions such as the Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Bar­ba­dos and The Ba­hamas.

Yet she ar­gued that pol­i­cy con­tra­dic­tions re­main.

Cit­i­zens are in­creas­ing­ly re­quired to ac­cess es­sen­tial ser­vices on­line, in­clud­ing tax fil­ing, pass­port re­newals and dri­ver’s per­mit trans­ac­tions, but con­sumers in T&T face high­er-than-av­er­age tax­es on mo­bile and broad­band ser­vices.

Dukha­ran de­scribed this ap­proach as re­gres­sive be­cause it in­creas­es the cost of par­tic­i­pat­ing in a dig­i­tal so­ci­ety, while gov­ern­ments si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly push more ser­vices on­line.

She ref­er­enced re­search from the GS­MA (Glob­al Sys­tem for Mo­bile Com­mu­ni­ca­tions As­so­ci­a­tion), which found that tax­es tar­get­ed at mo­bile ser­vices can un­der­mine dig­i­tal in­clu­sion and widen in­equal­i­ty.

T&T’s net­work per­for­mance presents a mixed pic­ture. Mo­bile down­load speeds are above the Caribbean av­er­age, but some coun­tries, in­clud­ing Puer­to Ri­co and the Cay­man Is­lands, of­fer faster con­nec­tions, al­beit at high­er costs.

The econ­o­mist al­so high­light­ed a trou­bling trend in the ICT sec­tor it­self. De­spite im­prove­ments in con­nec­tiv­i­ty, the ICT in­dus­try’s con­tri­bu­tion to the econ­o­my has de­clined slight­ly over the past decade. The sec­tor ac­counts for about 2.4 per cent of GDP, but its share has con­tract­ed by rough­ly 0.8 per cent over the last 10 years.

“This tells us that while con­sumers have ac­cess to tech­nol­o­gy, the wider econ­o­my is not ful­ly con­vert­ing that ac­cess in­to stronger ICT-led growth,” Dukha­ran sug­gest­ed.