ICT Usage by Businesses

Overview:

ICT usage is not a strength within the Dominican Republic. E-commerce is virtually non-existent. There is very little e-commerce in the Dominican Republic, and this includes both Business 2 Commerce and Business 2 Business sectors. In fact, the Dominican Republic 's ranking in E-Commerce is only 55th.

Highlights:

The low ranking in e-commerce can be attributed to several reasons. For example, there is a low penetration of PCs, a lack of credit card use, a small middle class population and a high internet access cost. As a result, start-up businesses are few and far between, especially in Information and Communication Technologies.

I could not find any website portals such as the major ones in the United States like yahoo.com or aol.com. Most of the websites found in the Dominican Republic tend to be related to travel and tourism, which is the county's largest major industry and source of income.

Payment technologies are starting to improve in the Dominican Republic . Banco Leon is one of the few banks that offers online services, and is the only bank that allows users to pay property taxes online. This technology was only introduced in February, 2007 (19). There has also been a recent trend to build portals for shopping online by national trade promotion organizations. The website for the Dominican Republic, when visited, looks more like a blog than an actual shopping website. However, the objective of this portal is to also host and market national products. Although a small step, this is a step in the right direction for the Dominican Republic (20). Other countries involved in this initiative include Argentina and El Salvador.

The Dominican Republic seems far behind many other countries, although one may wonder how beneficial E-Commerce truly would be with the lack of internet usage within the country.