The Invest Dominica Authority is looking to increase its capacity to attract foreign direct investment to Dominica.
The IDA has the mandate to facilitate and promote investment in Dominica. However employing the right skills to get the job done in a competitive market has been a challenge in the past.
The technical assistance project which is working to better equip IDA staff for marketing business opportunities in Dominica is being conducted by Communiqué International.
Project Manager is David O’donovan.
He said, “We’ve identified a number of target companies in the US and Europe that we feel would have the potential interest to invest in Dominica. So we’re working with IDA to develop the business case that will convince these investors to come take a look.
“It’s all very fine to read in a report that Dominica is a good place but really the benefit is to get those investors on an airplane to come to Dominica to see for themselves the really strong business place that does exist here,” he explained.
While Communiqué International began working with the IDA in September of 2014, actual training and on-the-job coaching began in January 2015.
Managing Director of Communiqué International, Peter Finnegan anticipates great results from the project.
“The project has been going really well. When you go into this world of foreign direct investment, it’s very competitive. The people who are going to be out marketing need to be really sharp at what they’re doing because lots of people want tourism investment and business property relief investment. Now Dominica has some advantages in both those areas so the important thing is to have the people here skilled to go out and sell that message and convince people…”
He added, “There has been an enormous amount of hard work done by the IDA. We’ve worked with them on a couple of missions and since then we’ve been working with them from Ireland via Skype on a weekly basis. The campaign has just started within the last couple of days; we’ve been going out and contacting people to set up meetings in the US and other countries so that when the people of the IDA go out, they will be as good as and better than the other people in the world.”
The project looks primarily at attracting investments in business processing, outsourcing and tourism. The IDA anticipates that the project will bring benefits to Dominica.
“We have a complete database of potential investors who could come to Dominica and with the [help of] the training, we will meet with them and see if we can get them to actually come in to do site visits and decide whether maybe months or a year from now to do business in Dominica. Once this business is established, we will see the ripple effect throughout the economy and things will eb better for us here in Dominica,” according to Senior Investment Promotion Officer at the Invest Dominica Authority, Hermina Augustine.
The project is funded by Compete Caribbean and the Government of Dominica.