"We're believers in the Jamaican story," said Digicel chairman Denis O'Brien.  "We think that Jamaica is going through a renaissance similar to what Ireland went through in the late 1980s, and as a place to attract investors we think that Jamaica has one of the more outstanding opportunities in the Caribbean."

O'Brien gave as an example the investment now taking place in tourism, particularly the construction of large hotels by Spanish resort chains.

Late last year, Spain's ambassador to Jamaica, Jesus Silva, predicted that investments by Spanish companies in Jamaica's tourism sector would surpass US$1.3 billion this year.

The new resorts, he said, would create direct employment of 15,000 and roughly 50,000 indirect jobs.  "When you look at all the different things you need as an investor," said O'Brien, "if you're into tourism you won't see anything like the beauty of Jamaica.  Particularly in the northern shores, obviously there's a lot of investment coming in from the Spanish companies, and they recognise that."

O'Brien also said he saw a lot of scope for investment in the service and manufacturing sectors, and suggested that "the economy is probably doing better than people realise".

"So that's the reason why we're continuing to invest," he said, adding that demand was also a determining factor.

"It's extraordinary," O'Brien told the Business Observer.  "About 86 per cent of people in Jamaica now have a mobile phone, whereas five, six years ago that was maybe less than 10 per cent."

The US$100-million investment, interjected Colm Delves, Digicel's group chief executive officer, will see the firm upgrading switches, WiMAX, network facilities, training programmes and retail stores.

"You name it, it's like the Imelda Marcos shopping list," added O'Brien.

He argued that mobile telephony is, in many ways, the starting point for countries wishing to create a knowledge-based economy and develop a sort of ICT strategy because a mobile phone is the first device, aside from a television remote control, that most people would have held in their hands.

"We know there are plans to try and increase the penetration of computers in the country," said O'Brien.  "We think that mobile phones are the sort of opening steps to setting up an ICT economy.

"Also, one of the things that we think is very positive is the fact that there are now fibre-optic submarine cables coming into Jamaica, so that monopoly has been broken and that, I think, is positive for companies that are setting up here and need communications links at low costs."

He predicted that that development would stimulate more investment "because submarine cables are like umbilical cords for transferring information.  And if you have that kind of access, well, the whole world market opens up.  So these are the kinds of things that we think are very positive about Jamaica right now".

Since setting up business in Jamaica five years ago, Digicel has been on an aggressive expansion drive in the Caribbean and Latin America and now serves 2.6 million subscribers in 20 countries.

Last week, it announced that it had entered into an agreement to acquire an unrelated firm named Digicel Holdings Limited that operates a GSM mobile telecommunications business in El Salvador.

That pending acquisition is in keeping with O'Brien's view that there are tremendous investment opportunities in the region.

"One of the key things is that there is an immense opportunity for companies like Digicel now to go down through Central America," he told the Business Observer.  "There's another 10, 15 countries in this region where we're hopeful that we can launch our business.  That will bring us up to 35 countries."

It's all happening very fast, but according to Delves, Digicel is coping.

"We're building as quickly as we can, but we're getting more and more licences, so our roll-out teams are in heavy demand at the moment," he said.

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