Bahamian Minister of Financial Services and Investments, Allyson Maynard Gibson, has outlined to Parliament the Government’s intentions regarding e-commerce. Last November, the minister promised rapid action to computerise the Companies Registry. Now she has defined the jurisdiction’s general e-commerce goals, and the legislation she plans to bring forward:<\/P><\/p>\n
To create the degree of legal certainty necessary to inspire confidence in on-line commercial activity, by according legal recognition to electronic contracts;
\nTo set out the duties and liability of e-commerce service providers and intermediaries;
\nTo create an offence arising out of unlawful interference with computers and computer systems;
\nTo create a framework consistent with international standards on privacy of personal information.
\nMs Gibson compared the Bahamas’ situation to what had been achieved in Bermuda by 2002 : <\/P><\/p>\n
95% of companies surveyed have internal e-mail,
\n92% have connections to the Internet,
\n70% are using some form of electronic payments,
\n43% are already using a web-site for promotion and
\n28% are already into e-procurement.<\/P><\/p>\n
The Minister insisted that the economic health of The Bahamas will depend on how people, government and the business community embrace e-business. As she sees it, the purpose of E-Government will be to inform, engage, and empower the people (members of parliament) serve, and is particularly relevant given the archipelagic nature of the country.<\/P><\/p>\n
Ms Gibson emphasised that the necessary people resources must be available, saying that there was no point in pretending that all is well with education. There was an urgent need for a revamp the educational system to support e-commerce development, especially career development. <\/P><\/p>\n
By Mike Godfrey, for LawAndTax.com<\/B><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The economic health of The Bahamas will depend on how people, government and the business community embrace e-business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_10223285771444175_51037792744":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-240428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=240428"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240637,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240428\/revisions\/240637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=240428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=240428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bahamasb2b.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=240428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}