The Long Range Information Technology Team here is excited about becoming the Newfoundland sponsor for Industry Canada's E-Commerce pilot project.

Craig Williams, economic development officer with the Department of Development and Rural Renewal and a member of the Long Range team, said Industry Canada's purpose for this pilot is to create concrete examples of how main street business can utilize electronic-commerce around the country.

He said electronic-commerce is seen as being an enormous growth sector and an opportunity that will redefine the market place during the next few years.

This commerce is done through a web page called Community Storefronts which can be visited by dialling: www.communitystorefronts.com on the Internet.

"I believe our retail sector is in for a big change because of this. There will be opportunities in this change and this project will give people the chance to take advantage of these opportunities in rural Newfoundland before it happens, due to this program," Williams said.

He said it's time now for entrepreneurs to prepare for it and they need people who are on the net now.

He said this has to be up and running within the next two weeks as Newfoundland has just been brought in the last few weeks.

Williams said if a business don't have it's own web page the team can help get them one, but they prefer to have people with web pages in the early going.

"Industry Canada with partners: Royal Bank, GE Capital, Strategic Profits Inc. And TouchNet Canada, have put together a cadillac program. We're really interested in getting rural businesses involved in this, anywhere in the province," he said.

Williams said the Long Range team sees this as an opportunity for rural communities to create new opportunities and to become more competitive in the evolving global market place.

He said two separate day-long training sessions will be held--one on Oct. 27 on the west coast, in Stephenville, and another on Oct. 26 in a central or eastern location, depending upon the degree of interest.

Requirements for participants include a cost of $374; an E-mail account, web page up and running; attendance at a day's training with training free to the participant; the business must be set up to accept credit cards.

As well, participants must be willing to set up a merchant account at the royal Bank for this project for real-time transactions.

This cost has been waived.

Williams said he knows there are enterprises in communities that would benefit greatly from this project and that they need these winning examples in their communities to get to other businesses to see the opportunities this medium has to offer rural main streets.