 The National Competitiveness and Productivity Council, NCPC, has achieved another milestone towards fully implementing the collateral registry. The collateral registry supports a recently passed security interest in Moveable Properties Act. Economist and project leader at the NCPC, Shama Mathre, said this project is now halfway through implementation, with a formal launch scheduled for the latter part of this year. We have to remember why is it that we're implementing, and that is to decrease the cost of access to financing, and to ease access to financing, particularly for micro and small businesses. And of course, it would have positive externalities for other stakeholders. Stakeholders and end users recently participated in a week-long hands-on training and consultation session on the novel collateral registry system and the security interest in Moveable Properties Act. The session brought together professionals from both the legal and financial sectors who had taught the navigational tools within the platform to successfully complete transactions on the collateral registry. So far, it's a very interactive session, very hands-on, and the system, the software is very user-friendly. I think the advantage is that everybody now has greater access to being able to do this. With this software, the whole registration process, for me, I find it's going to be seamless, more efficient, more accurate, and of course cost-effective for the customers out there. So all in all, I think it's a very good initiative. I'm looking forward to working with it, and I know my colleagues would be excited to work with something like that. The collateral registry system will be based at and managed by the High Court. We also had training sessions with the High Court staff to prepare them for the coming of this collateral registry. They will be the host of the system, and so they did work with the vendor in terms of learning the different activities that they can perform within this system. The World Bank and the International Finance Cooperation IFC have partnered with the NCPC from Project Inception. Senior Operations Officer with the IFC, John Wilson, observed that the security interest in Moveable Properties Act was met with both excitement and apprehension by stakeholders due to the significant amendments to the previous reform. Part of the session today had the objective to assist in that transition from the previous system that was a mixed bag of different acts and different legal mechanisms and different legal products into a uniform or cohesive product and a single registration system. So I think that there's enthusiasm and acceptance that that will be extremely beneficial for financial institutions, but that transition, how do you go from the old way of doing things to the new way of doing things, has been one of the concerns that had been expressed? He said the way forward post the launch is to work with financial institutions to innovate credit products that use new types of collateral that engage in a more sustainable and inclusive manner with those who have not had traditional collateral to offer. St Lucia is the first in the OECS region to establish a collateral registry. And so this project initially started with only St Lucia in mind, and then we got the attention from the World Bank, from the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank and from other regional agencies to replicate this project throughout the region. The NCPC will roll out a full PR and marketing campaign for the launch phase of this project scheduled for September 2023 for the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council Glenn Simon reporting.