John Myers Jr, Business Reporter

Anticipating that ecommerce transactions will eventually outpace traditional business, Jamaica is pushing to enact cyber crime legislation to bolster the recently enacted Electronic Transaction Act.

Technology Minister Phillip Paulwell says the pending law is mainly for the protection of consumers against fraud.

The bill will go to the House later this year, Paulwell said, and that with its passage, "We will have the most modern legislative framework in the region to enable e-transactions and encourage our businesses to move in this way," he said at a breakfast meeting of information and communication technology CEOs Wednesday.

As the popularity of the Internet grows, and with the setting up of virtual communities like Hi5.com and Myspace.com) that cater mainly to the younger population, more large corporations are shifting their marketing strategies online to capture these potential buyers of goods and services.

Paulwell contended that, "No business should be operating in Jamaica, especially above the micro level without a web presence."

He stressed the importance for Jamaican businesses to also move in this direction because, "In the future e-transactions are going to continue to dominate and very soon the traditional mode of doing business will not be present."

Christopher Evans. founder and CEO of Foreshore Limited, an e-commerce company based in Jersey, the Channel Islands, said Internet sales was growing exponentially and was estimated to reach US$150 billion by 2010 in the United Kingdom alone.

According to him, Internet retail represented the largest potential for growth, noting that while sales in the traditional retail stores across the UK remained stagnant last year, there was significant growth in sales over the Internet. This, he said, was contrary to forecasts by analysts who projected that Internet retail sales would not account for more than 15 per cent of overall sales.

Evans, who was keynote speaker at the breakfast meeting that preceded the regional summit of the Central Information Technology Office (CITO) in Kingston, said the online market were mainly the young - the egeneration.

Jamaica has no ready data on its ecommerce sector.

Paulwell told the Financial Gleaner, however, that he had commissioned a survey which should be finalised within two months.

Asked about incentives for companies to explore the possibilities in e-trade, the Minister said their survival should impel them to act.

"The overriding incentive must be the willingness to survive because you are not going to survive if you don't have it, and very importantly when you have it, you are able to expand into markets you couldn't reach before."

The Minister said he was more "focused on getting our infrastructure in place" and that it was up to businesses to generate their own designs and web management structures.

john.myers@gleanerjm.com