 Hello. My name is Peter Lord. I'm the moderator for the next effort of this panel discussion. The purpose of the panel discussion is to enlighten the public and the national export strategy development process. It's relevant to Saint Lucia's national development thrust and hopefully to stimulate interest in the participation in the process. We have with us three panelists. I'd like you to introduce yourself. Good morning. Good morning, viewer, and thank you for having me here. Mr. Lord, I am Jacqueline Emmanuel Flood and I'm the Chief Executive Officer for the Trade Export Promotion Agency, which we commonly refer to as TIPRO. Thank you. My name is Paula James, Executive Director of the Saint Lucia Manufacturers Association. We are here to participate to ensure that what is needed to help drive the sector is taken into account. Good morning, fellow panelists and viewers. My name is Thomas Samuel, Trade Advisor, Director of International Trade in the Ministry Department of Commerce, and our ministry department is a lead agency of government involved with the National Export Development Strategy. Thank you. As we proceed, I would like to list out some facts about Saint Lucia. Saint Lucia is ranked 186th in terms of exports in the world. In 2015, Saint Lucia exported 87.2 million US dollars, both of them. In 2016, the value of domestic exports contracted by about 12.8%. Visitor arrivals declined 7.3% and banana revenues declined 11.2%. Mrs. Flood, why a national export strategy? Well, export is a national effort. It's not something that we could necessarily focus on at a micro level. It's part of a country's development stress. So it needs to be approached at the micro level. It's part of government development policy. And so it is important that we take that kind of scope of it and we bring together all the relevant parties to look critically at where we are as a country. I think already alluded to, exports are produced on a country by country basis. It's how one country competes really against another. So for us, a national export strategy is important for us as a country where we could look at our potential as a country and how we develop that potential for export growth. It is a very involved process. It involves both the public sector, who are always at the forefront in terms of negotiating agreements for trade, etc. So they too have a perspective as to where the opportunities are and which countries we have favorable relationship with for trade. And it also involves the private sector, who are the producers of the goods and services that we export as well. And also those persons or institutions that provide services along the change, like the value chain, like customs, transportation, etc. It takes all of that collectively to come together to develop a winning strategy for export development. And so a national export strategy is that summary of what we all collectively can do together and we believe should be our priorities in order to see our export sector grow. Thank you. Since this is a strategy, I'm assuming that it is part of some kind of trade policy. Could you tell us something about our trade policy, Dr. Samir? And what are the issues that our business folks should be aware of in terms of exports? Well, we are a small open economy. And so because of that structural reality where we really depend on engaging the rest of the world. And so we have basically a trade policy based on trying to get maximum access, market access to, first of all, we have our regional space and beyond. So we are a member of the WTO and so we are guided by our commitments and obligations under the WTO framework. So as an open economy we reduce unnecessary restrictions, that's a general thrust. And given our sensitivities and stage of development, we would necessarily need to have, we have crafted with the help of our regional and international partners a policy, policies that would advance our development taking into consideration our sensitivities. But there are a number of challenges as you indicated. Challenges to stay within the rules is a rules-based environment and where the economic theory suggests that excessive protection is harmful to countries in the long run. And while we do need to protect fledgling and companies and sectors, we need to also help them compete by engaging through innovation, by taking proactive measures that allows them to develop competencies and strengths and to align their resources in line with the comparative advantages and so on. So as to ensure that we have sustainable operations in terms of firms that don't constantly need government support and so on. So the treatment environment really is a challenging one altogether, especially for small states. And we have been trying to draw attention to the rest of the world, especially to our peculiarities we're given the smallness and our vulnerabilities. And so our policies generally reflect these realities where we try to build from the bottom up strong companies and try to discourage waste of resources in areas that are not likely to be very beneficial. So in essence, and that work has been done not just by St. Lucia as a nation, but in collaboration with our original framework like the OECS and the CARICOM and of course other donor and bilateral partners trying to help us navigate that environment I've just tried to describe in terms of the challenges in which we must operate. So in essence, this is the sort of logic that underpins much of what we've been doing in terms of crafting national trade policy. Mrs. James, as a representative of SME, who are the major beneficiaries if we have a successful export strategy. Dr. Thomas talked about innovation and quality management and so on. What is SME doing to foster innovation among its members? Well for us, I think it's eight years now, we have gone into this quality awards whereby we do an audit using the Bureau of Standards to go out into the audit and the various factories, both large and small. And that will give the manufacturer a sense of what it is they need to fix, what it is they need to do to start becoming export ready, especially the smaller ones. Because we see a lot of young persons coming in with a lot of innovative ideas. But with regards to some of the standard simple things that they need to do, they're not away. So it's okay to say innovate, but we also need to see their standards. And we would encourage them to do the standards for the local market to start with so that once you are inculcated in that manner, you will continue to produce your product with a quality standard. And then you could move from that standard into the next standard and you get ready to export. But even that, it's a serious cost. So that too can be an impediment for them because standards are very costly. Mrs. Fleur, tell us about TIPA and its role in this whole process. Okay. In very simple terms, we are open economy, small as Dr. Samuel said. And everything we need, almost everything we need, we have to import it. And it's a simple mass, a simple relationship. If we're going to have to import goods, we need foreign exchange. And therefore we must be able to earn that foreign exchange so that we can buy the things that we want. It's like I'm planting, planting, and somebody's planting mango, green mangoes. I want the mangoes. We need to find a way to exchange. And the medium for exchange is to get foreign exchange. You must buy the goods in foreign currency. And so countries like ours need to be able to earn. We must boost our capacity to earn foreign exchange. We do that for tourism. When people come and they enjoy our goods and services here, we still sell something to them to earn it. Or we can actually export. We can take the goods and services and take it out to where the consumer is. And to do that, you need a sort of a driving force to do that. And a few years ago when we did our very first export strategy, one of the recommendations that came out of that is that you need an institution to spearhead this, to lead this, to go out there and to help companies sell their goods and services outside, to help them market and promote, to create a sort of a brand that people can recognize. Now when you go out and export into the global market place, you are just one small little tiny island in a stream of hundreds of countries all trying to do the same thing, trying to get to the same markets as you, some of them are much larger. So you do need to have to, it's a task that requires some level of focus. You must need special skills to do it, to understand the global business environment, to understand marketing and promotion. And that's how TIPA came about. So the government decided then, it already had a tourism promotion agency, it had an investment promotion agency, but export was a specialized area and therefore they needed to be an institution to take that baton and run with it. And that's how TIPA exists. So TIPA's job is to spare head tenacious export thrust, to help companies export, find markets overseas, we provide first of all research, market intelligence, we find out who will buy our products, we find out who we're competing against, how do they price point their products, how do hours compare, where do we find niches, so that people we can find consumers first of all and distributors may want to carry our products in the market. We go out, we take films out, we help them, we show them what they're supposed to do when they're out there, how to engage with buyers overseas, all of these things require some capacity building and so we do that. As Mrs. James pointed out, the whole issue of quality and standards, well she's taken the baton of that, we cannot overstress that because when we go out there and we promote our products, you are competing against other people and you really do have to be the best. You're going to have to meet the standards. So we also support companies in making sure that they acquire those standards that they need to enter those markets. Usually the standards is really the entry bar. If you can't make it, if you can't make it, you just don't get in, it really is effective to open and shut the door in trade. So we do all of that. These are the kinds of services that TIPA provide. We also provide information. People who want to do business with us, they want to find out about our export sector, who are the people they should contact. We have an information platform on the internet and we have people in our staff who focus on that a lot so that we can answer questions, we can give information to our exporters and we work very, very closely with the manufacturers and the service providers so that we understand what they do and we can represent them effectively in the marketplace. It's probably a very detailed approach but I kind of want to give you a practical sense of what it is that TIPA does. Thank you. For S&E, Mrs. Flood talked about market entry requirements. We'll go to a break now and when we come back we'll talk a little more about its impact on your membership. How do I decide which telecommunications service provider to use? When choosing a mobile, landline, cable TV and internet service provider or changing the one you currently use, what should you think about in order to get the best service to meet your needs? Why do I need the service? What is the quality of service offered? What are the rates? Are there hidden charges? How much can I afford to pay for the service? What are the customer service obligations of the provider? Not satisfied with the service? The choice is yours whether or not to use the service. This message is brought to you as a public service announcement by Ectel, the NTRC What are you doing? Mrs. James Mrs. Flood talked about the various areas and particularly about market entry requirements for the assistance that she's providing to a membership and so on and I wanted to know about what are you all doing about fostering productivity, the improvement in productivity among your membership? We conduct training ourselves within the manufacturing sector Last year we did a customer service and human resource and we had a number of companies at least 30 persons came in from within the sector to go through that process because for you to be able to be productive you need to understand what it is your customers want how you have to go there and sell the product and be up and up to stay in a competitive environment a lot of them have put people out to actually go and monitor the supermarkets now to see how the product is moving where on the shelves the product is for you to go back and see if you can move it from the bottom to the top and start getting a good eye for your product and shelf space So we do the training within ourselves among our sector to try and get our members to a certain level and to understand and appreciate what it is they need to do We have the new ones coming in and a challenge we have is testing a product we have been hearing that the lab is coming up at the Ministry of Agriculture we are hoping when the lab is open it should be able to test some products for us initially because to test a product you have to send it either to Corori in Trinidad or somewhere in Jamaica to get it tested and that too is also a challenge for us in the sector with the new ones coming into the market and we have some fantastic products coming in but before you can start saying in the export you need to get that product tested so we are hoping with the lab getting ready to open a union we will hear the good things that is going to be tested at the lab in union I am just curious do you have any relationship with the productivity council Yes we do we work very closely with them they use us as a matter of fact to do their benchmarking they use the manufacturing sector to test the tool because they have done a tool I think they brought in a university from London that came in to help them prepare a tool so they can send it out into the market and they use the manufacturing sector to test it I think they are finished so they just fine tune in now so they can send it out to every company to use it as a tool to measure productivity Dr. Samia we are part of CARICOM OECS we also are signatory to the economic partnership agreement with the EU what are some of the unexploited opportunities available under those arrangements Well based purely on the level of participation of our firms in terms of the volume of exports if we have to use as a indicator there is a world of unexplored opportunity there there is a lot to be done even in our regional space if you look at first of all we have the OECS the OECS is our backyard and really we need to increase the volume of exports moving within that space and Saint Lucia needs to do that much more we need to see commercial presence of our firms establishing offices and various market entry strategies in other words being on the ground in some way through partnerships through some alliances we need to see that happening so these are opportunities that are there because essentially it's a common space and that also extends a large measure to CARICOM as well as far as the movement of goods we have something called the CSME the CARICOM Single Market and the economy although that aspect is not fully in place yet really to create a regional space for building critical mass to allow firms to achieve as close as possible the economies of scale by not having to deal with to have more competitive goods that can move freely within the region as long as they meet of course the national or regional standards as was alluded to by my colleagues here and so what I am saying to you there's a world of as far as market opportunity in our bilaterals for example I would like to share with those that are listening we have non-restriprocal arrangements where our goods can enter those markets duty free and the reverse is not true where their goods are not allowed at this juncture to come into syncluture and to compete now this opportunity needs to be you know we need to take advantage of this one under the IPA about a significant percentage of our trade in terms of our goods in terms of the tariff universe is allowed to enter the European space duty free what we need is activism where firms avail themselves through the ministry through TPA which has been a great job through Caribbean export which is our original counterpart to get advice, get information on all market profiles they have a lot of things like business to business arrangements taking part to begin to convert that opportunity into tangible benefits for themselves so in the most syncluture I can say to you there's a lot of unexplored opportunity we need to for example come together from joint ventures we do not all need to do all our work ourselves we need to do things like go out there with missions and look at the language issues for example in Latin America if this language is a problem we need to try and get around that Martinique right in our region we have the French what they call overseas territories or the European the Dom's as we call them or what they call French Dom to mean overseas territory all throughout our region that's our backyard as well so all of that we have preferential market access where our goods subject to some local local administrative or municipal kind of requirements in terms of say taxes or whatever generally we have duty free market access alright we're about to go to the break when we come back I have one more question for you along these lines because apparently there's a gap between the arrangements that are made and the understanding of the business people and I want to know what effort is being made to help the people understand the arrangements we make on the international level and how does it benefit them I have my mobile, landline, cable TV and internet service if I have a problem with any of the services what should I do? here's what you should do to resolve the problem first get in philota complaint form and lodge your complaint with the service provider if after 30 days there is still no solution you may contact your national telecommunications regulatory commission NTRC this message is brought to you as a public service announcement by Ectel the NTRC and this station I just wanted to know is there any effort when we sign on to a particular agreement is there any effort being made to educate the beneficiaries of that agreement as to what opportunities are available just a simple question short answer yes but it's a very uneven experience because some countries are a bit more aggressive they have the requisite structures that are able to take the opportunity and run with it sometimes there is also the orientation a lot of companies are already outwardly oriented and so they are more receptive they generally scan environments looking for opportunities so in other words the trade policy people are making efforts to educate business people we do what they call community outreach initiatives especially through the office of the trade negotiation they would come around through the member states be on television and programs like this they speak with our BSOs they speak with our trade support organizations to try to get the same message out there to get people to see that their opportunities and encourage them to take avail themselves to this opportunity thank you we have gone through phase one of the national export strategy development process could you just give us an overview of that well I think it kind of leads on from the questions that we have had all of the things we talk about productivity trade agreements are all very important in the whole process of developing an export strategy you need to really look at where you are as a country what are the challenges that exist on what we call supply side and the production level some of the issues that you talk about productivity why do we match up and where do we have an advantage where are we strong what are the unique things about us that would make our goods and services stand out and sell out there we also need to take consideration of the agreements where do we have agreements and where are the unexploited opportunities in those agreements and so the first phase of the national export strategy kind of looked at all of that what are the weaknesses what are the advantages what are the disadvantages what do we need to fix and that process was involved most of the private sector I mean we do have what we call a core team that is businesses institutions from both public and private sector that come together to form sort of the expertise needed to provide it for the export strategy we had the International Trade Center in Geneva which is a joint institution of the WTO, the World Trade Organization and United Nations that exists to focus and specifically on trade and they do have within their ranks very many trade experts in different areas they provided technical support and worked with a team here in St. Lucia so in addition to the core team we also had a technical support team from the Ministry of Economic Affairs Ministry of Commerce Ministry of Finance and TIPA we brought in a navigator what we call a navigator someone who could have coordinate meetings bring people together when we needed them exports from the public sector and private sector and over a six month period we really just examine all of those factors it's kind of in business what you call a SWOT analysis you look at your strengths your threats, your opportunities and to determine out of that what should be our priorities so we had some criteria and that determined we wanted to find where exactly St. Lucia should focus going forward and so we look at those sectors where there was a high demand for our products in the global market in the external market we look at the OECS market, the French market as Dr. Samuel all the markets where exactly which of our sectors there was a demand for our market for our products and services we also looked at those sectors that had a potential to drive growth locally engage people where we want to have the highest returns in terms of employment and socio-economic development so for example there are some sectors that they need people because of what they are they have high employment so that would rank higher for us we also look at sectors that would be able to have innovation because we want to be able to in the global market things change very very quickly we do something today tomorrow is obsolete so we wanted to be able to choose sectors as priorities that would serve kind of as a fulcrum you could pull up the whole first towards innovation and producing what we call high value added items because in the global market you want to get the best return so if you are going to spend 6 hours doing something you want to spend 6 hours doing something instead of at a high price to get a high return and usually if you understand value chain there are different areas within the value chain in which a company can intervene you could either be the primary producer for example if you do bananas you grow the farmers a primary producer if you process it you could actually be at a higher return and you can have goods processed before you actually finish goods so all of these things I may sound technical but I want you to appreciate all that went in into phase 1 to allow us to what we call settle or pick of priorities because you can do everything in the world but we don't want to do everything in the world we want to focus on what we do best what is going to give us the best return what is going to have the greatest impact on our economy what is going to create the most jobs for us what is going to help us in innovation we can set that criteria in phase 1 we settled on what we now have as the priority sectors for our export strategy and we identify what we call cross sector strategies these are areas or issues that if we address them they will impact our economy across the board and so that was really the output of phase 1 so at this point this is where we are we've identified the priority export sectors and identified the cross sector that we want to focus on can you briefly tell us what we should look for in phase 2 phase 2 is where we delve a little deeper so for example you have you develop sector strategies so we actually determine what actions we need to take now to develop those sectors so for example in phase 1 we have agro processing as a priority now in phase 2 what do we need to do to develop the agro processing sector so that we can actually see the growth in exports in agro processing so phase 2 is that detailed sector strategy that identify the key actions needed going forward so that we can realize that potential ok we will take a break at this point and when we resume we will talk further about phase 2 of the national export strategy development process ok Mrs. Bleda I wanted you to tell us a little more about phase 2 and how entities can participate thank you phase 2 is very important phase 1 we call it a roadmap what we have developed is a roadmap so we have a document that says these are your priority sectors that you should focus on going forward and these are the cross sectors that you need to focus on however it does not tell us what we need to do it doesn't say you should address this problem in that way phase 2 what we are going to be doing is we are going to be examining those sectors in detail we are going to look at for example for agriculture where what we need to develop agriculture there will be issues to do with standards there will be issues to do with transportation there will be issues to do with even the whole process of production what happens in the field there will be a value chain analysis so we are going to be looking at the value chain from producing our crops to getting them to market and we will understand where we need to intervene it may be production side it may be to do with the quality to do with transportation it may be how we package our products some for example I give you a simple example we believe that Senucia has a very good we have been talking about it so many times we have what is called a Senucia breadfruit but getting that breadfruit to market to get it to the market in time breadfruit needs at least three days to get to market to be sold as it begins to it will arrive in a waste of time how it is packing so it is not bruised etc the transportation that is available from the time it is picked from the tree we need to examine all of that determine what we need to do to market in the right condition in the right package in the right time to get the right price so the phase two activity of the export strategy is extremely important for everybody to get participate the producers so we will be informed sector teams where we bring every party along that chain so the people doing the packaging the people doing the transportation the fine people the farmers who are great the minister of culture officials who are the ones who deal with the regulations and all sorts of things we must all come together to determine what we need to do and out of that we will become a strategy and a strategy is an action plan a game plan a playbook I am going to put it in simple terms if you play in football there may be different games that you play different strategies on the field that you put in place because you want to win so we need to come together and put together a playbook an action plan that says for us to win in exporting our bread foods this is the play is what we need so our culture has to do this TIPA will have to do that the marketing authority will have to do that the farmers will have to do that the extension office in the ministry will have to do that the airlines will have to provide these kinds of service this is the strategy I want you to understand a strategy is a game plan a winning game plan and so in phase two that is when we are mapping out the strategy and out of that all agencies the SMA will have a clear action plan as to how they support their members TIPA will have an action plan for itself that says within this game plan is what TIPA needs to do is what the ministry needs to do it is very important that all the parties participate the government officials participate the private sector must participate and it is going to put a tremendous demand on everybody because for example the SMA would have to be sitting in several for example we have we have five or seven private sectors and pretty sure almost all of them may concern the SMA and so the SMA will have to find expertise among its members to sit in seven different committees but that's how we have to do it so the phase two really does suck up quite a lot of expertise but it allows us to be very very pragmatic, very succinct very detailed and so at the end of that we will have what we call sector strategy there will be a national strategy for agriculture there will be a national strategy for agro processing there will be a national strategy for ICT because it's a priority and that is what we are now going to do and that process will last about another, there will be a two week period in November where we will experts from the International Trade Centre will come to St Lucia and work with us with these committees simultaneously so that by the end of two weeks we would have pretty much carved that out and so I am appealing to everyone and let me not just appeal, I really need to thank first of all of everybody who have been involved in phase one because there was quite a bit of input from the private sector and from the public sector and to ask them to please make the effort to double their efforts in November so we could actually see that ourselves move on to the more critical phase of the export strategy in this phase two okay in phase two we are doing the global value chain analysis and so on so we enter in this thing with a blank slate because we need the analysis to know where we are going to do what right is the SME preparing its members to participate on that level yes we will participate I mean for us our biggest concern and our biggest challenge is transportation because we hear a lot about moving it and getting ready to export and this strategy will hopefully find a way for us to sit maybe with the OECS office to see where we can arrange some shipping within just the OECS because even to move there we will have this strategy we are ready to run products are ready to ship and you have no shipping that is a serious situation for the manufacturing sector serious for us and we still have geese in the region but geese come up the islands and we are the last port and they go back to England so there is nobody to take from St. Lucia to go back and shipping by air is costly so you have a married jet you have another one I think just came in that we can use but as a costly process it is making our product more expensive and therefore even harder to compete so we are a part of this thing to make sure that the challenges we are having are fixed or attempted to be fixed because it is really really tough to be able to export small packages small things that people want now for now and you can't get it to move because we have no shipping so for us that is our biggest challenge Dr. Samuel how can business organizations and you hear the SME lamenting about one issue about logistics how can business organizations influence street policy? Well they are perhaps the most significant client of the work of the ministry they engage actively especially for someone as I could say passionate as Miss James to my life here and so they definitely their voice their views go along when shipping the actual you know text the language or the various instruments of our policy so they are very influential they are not they don't lie around they she calls me whenever she has something on the news you know what is this and let's make keeps us on our toes so we have regular meetings well not as regular as we like sometimes but is opened up policy as the minister has indicated at any point she can call the permanent secretary called a trade advisor and so forth so the BSO especially the solution manufacturing association definitely is a leading advocate on the issues on behalf of its members in trying to seek opportunity and to encourage them to take advantage of the opportunities and they participate in almost all the exercises that we have anything I mean we doing just last week we were talking about single window which is an initiative under the trade facilitation agreement of the WTO they involved just recently we had a training session on market access database trying to allow them to stay from the computers and the offices to get information on markets you know just get the as a feat of fingers where I don't know which one it is in terms of engaging the the tariff or the border requirements and exporting a good to any place in the region or a country that we have agreements with so I must tell you I am encouraged I know that at this juncture we are new to this we only have a few years into this as we integrate we are going out to see so to speak as we navigate the waters of global trade and so forth but I am encouraged by the fact that we are seeing changes we are seeing some of the work begin to pay some dividends and we are going to continue the dedicated work of the work of TIPA through the ministry and manufacturing association and other agencies to go export because as was said in the opening remarks by my colleague Mrs. Flood to support our consumption through imports which is the largest economic activity we have to be able to pay for these imports through foreign exchange which is earned through exports at the moment we have seen the decline in our banana industry and you saw what I did to our merchandise account and increased burden on tourism to fill the gap but we have to now diversify the economy build stronger exports and begin to improve the numbers and export growth is the way we have heard the cliche of export-led growth private sector-led growth all of that really comes down to us getting more flowing out of Zinlusha to the rest of the world we are not just good but in services as well and as we encourage that orientation and more of our people get involved I believe the future will be better my final comment if I am allowed to is that I want us to begin to think a little more creatively though in terms of how we do those things we have been for the most part taking a traditional approach where we want to produce finished goods from start to finish and that is the sort of culture everything in-house now you know the cost of doing that and the risk of doing that is much higher but if we begin to do finding innovative ways where partnerships where we reduce risk or share risk through taking part in value chains global value chains, regional value chains where we can be responsible for one aspect of the whole thing and do it at a much larger scale so the whole system depends on everyone equally so we have to start to do that and we have to do agreements as well not only produce a good from start to finish where we are responsible for the packaging, the labeling, meeting the standards doing the stuff, dealing with the farmers all of the elements it's quite demanding sometimes and difficult so we have to begin to think of how we can parcel that out to those who are better at doing some things where we concentrate on the things that we are better at doing because I think that's what fees do is about fees to the global value chain analysis that's what it would do to find out where we best placed to produce what at what price and so on I have a question for each of you if we produce this national export strategy and it is to be considered a success what are some of the major changes that we'd expect to see at the policy level at the strategy level and at the rubber meets the road at the business level, at the film level anybody could go first what are the changes we want to see in our institution we have this national export strategy and it should come to an end at 2021 in 2021 if I'm alive what should I see in terms of the evolution of TIPA the results that come out from TIPA the changes in firms and the changes in policy I would like to go first please I would love to see a rapid implementation process of whatever it is we do with the value chain because once there's implementation the manufacturers are ready to step up to the plate but the implementation is what for me is crucial because doing the value chain is excellent we have identified where we want to go let us start implementing so in 2021 what would I see in terms of like is there anything that I could see in terms of number of manufacturing firms productivity levels can I answer all of that for TIPA translates back into our own strategic planning and performance measurement framework so when this strategy is done and I just want to say that we do it yes we do support the firms but we have to lead them in having a long-term vision having a proactive approach to development because things change all the time and if we don't do that then we always be on the back foot reacting we need to set a goal as a nation and work at it and that translates for us into performance management performance management framework where for TIPA we would like to see and there goes for TIPA itself but if this is successful we should be able to see our client list because we want to see more companies actually exporting we would be surprised because many of our companies are small very few of them are actually exporting and so for one thing we would see a growth in just the export base the companies that are exporting and so TIPA itself prepared to transition to manage that change because our client base would be much bigger we also expect to see a diversity in our markets there's something that have been the same for a long long time and this is that our exports have been going to the same few markets and our export base has been very narrow that should change especially when it comes to the service and it needs to change I know time is running out but what is very important for a country like ours is the resilience as well it's very important that our export base diversify for the purpose of resilience look for example we talked earlier about Dominica and as Dominica has gone through this if there were more exporters in the service sector many of these exporters like for example in ICT could still be earning income even while the country is building back the bricks and mortar businesses so for us if this is successful we should see our export base that is much more resilient we should see an increase in exporters we should see an increase in our markets I think I'm kind of rushing that I know you're running into a break but it's something we can develop further thank you very much we are now proceeding to another break when we come back we'll talk further about what we expect to see in 2021 if the national export strategy is successful the most important thing is good health it's absolutely necessary to wash your hands if you want to keep good health even if you don't wash your hands or it's too expensive wash your hands often and then clean them thoroughly after a condition that is 6 months or 20,000 for example if you don't wash your hands after you change your clothes your life will be bad after you change your animal and after you change your hearing and if you don't wash your hands because your body will be dirty you have to wash your hands really often if you don't wash your hands 2nd pay your bills and dettatnet perman likelihood your business is cancelled it's important what you see With your money I think the health sector when the pandemic comes of policies, of policy influence and shaping of strategies. If this national export strategy is to be successful, what sort of changes do you expect at the policy level? I would expect that the policies would be complementary to ensuring this is successful, and I basically expect that all the supporting requirements to drive the strategy, drive the policy would be better embraced by any administration that leads to country. We're talking about funding, training, and all of the bits and pieces in the milieu, in the environment will be given. Because the buying is important, and sometimes I get a sense we're selling stones to the moon and preaching, but not always to the converted and there's a little bit of skepticism sometimes. People see trade, even some of our arrangements. Yes, I mean it's like an event. When was that? Was that last year? Not seeing that this is part of an ongoing relationship, arrangement that is here to stay. It's just part of what we have now. So I'm hoping that this strategy would have the kind of buy-in that the policy mix that is needed to ensure its success. Now I didn't itemize them, but just generally the leadership needs to come from our government at the executive level. And to support whether we have the services policy, we talk about investment policy, and all the other bits and pieces would be coming together in a sort of a coordinated push to drive the success of the national export development strategy. So really this is really what is needed. I think the message has gone out and we are seeing it in this panel again and those who are listening, we hope they will take note. Alright, in the little time that we have left, there's this big elephant in the room nobody talked about. And I mean you alluded to it a little bit, but where is the funding coming from? Well, there are two elephants. I think when Dr. Samel, if I answer you when Dr. Samel was speaking, it just brought back to my mind the saying that culture eats strategy for lunch every day. And that's one of the things that we're hoping that by doing what we're doing here that we can change people's mindset because there must be an appreciation for the fact that we need to diversify our economy. There must be an appreciation for the fact that we have an opportunity to grow. There is opportunity. There's no point in going out and have agreements and negotiating space. And so a lot of the things that we are going to be dealing with in the strategy will involve mindsets, changing mindsets, changing mindsets towards productivity, attitudes, people understanding that we need to produce more. When in the same six hours our competitors can produce X, we must be able to produce the same amount because we have the intellect, we have the ability, we have the equipment, we have everything. So for this to happen, one of the reasons is called a national export strategy is because it takes a national effort and because it needs people at every level to embrace and to make it happen. So if it's successful, we will be successful. If it's successful in 2020, there will be significant change that we will be able to observe among our own selves as a country. The danger of funding is there, it's real. But I always believe that when we work together, the little bit we have can go much further. The real danger is when we do not get together and do it in the way we're doing it now. When each party goes off and does something that looks good to them or to their own purpose, and then we all are at odds. And I keep saying it's like a bushfire, you can have a bushfire which burns everything down, it's visible and you have all the heat, or you can have a laser where you take the same energy, you concentrate that energy, and you can cut through the wall. So we, I think by coming together, putting our best efforts towards developing a national export strategy is the best approach. We have to understand that. The change must come right here. It's the best approach whereby we can, the manufacturing association, the ministry, TIPA, all the other stakeholders could be working towards the same end. That's the first thing. And I can assure you that is the most cost-effective way of doing it. When we have come to the conclusion as to what we want to do, we're going to have to put our money where our mouth is. It's not going to happen without some resources being put to the table. We are TPO, a trade promotion agency, and there are other trade promotion agencies in the world who are being funded, who are making miles ahead of us. So yes, there will be a need for the government to accept this. If it is done at the highest level, as Dr. Samuel said, it will have to be endorsed by the cabinet and it will have to be funded. It will have to be treated if the priority deserves and they will need to be funded. There will be other agencies, of course, we always go out who can support us, but we must be committed to our own export strategy. All right. So in 2021, we're looking for a new culture of cooperation among local stakeholders for the common good of St. Lucia. You said that you're looking for rapid implementation of future projects and so on, that we should have... The strategy. The strategy. The strategy to use future projects. The strategy. We're also looking for more companies where the tipers' client base will be enlarged and that there will be market diversity, like you say. Resilience. And market resilience. Economic resilience through export development. And a closer cooperation between the parties involved and the process of developing trade policy. Yes. Right. Well, we have now come to the close of this panel discussion. I want to thank everybody for participating and I hope that the public can participate in the whole process of developing the national export strategy. It is St. Lucia's national export strategy and it belongs to all of us. Thank you.