 The Ministry of Tourism, Information and Broadcasting, Culture and Creative Industries on Monday officially launched the Tourism Satellite Account TSA. The TSA is a standard statistical framework and the main tool for the economic measurement of tourism. It provides credible data on the impact of tourism and the associated employment. It also provides St. Lucia's balance of payments and information on tourism human resource characteristics. Minister for Tourism, Information and Broadcasting, Culture and Creative Industries, Honourable Dominic Fading, indicated that the TSA is very important in the process of designing economic policies related to tourism development. Tourism is simply a development tool. It is how we raise revenues through our government to invest in social services such as schools and hospitals and roads and playing fields, all those necessary infrastructure things that people require to have a good quality of life and to advance our country. And so this exercise of the tourism satellite account is of tremendous importance. It's a windfall policy achievement for our government and for indeed St. Lucia, the industry of tourism and the people of St. Lucia. It gives policymakers a better opportunity to make informed decisions. The implementation of the TSA serves to increase and improve knowledge of tourism's importance relative to overall economic activity to St. Lucia, assist in the development of more efficient tourism policies and employment, and creating awareness among the various players directly and indirectly involved in the tourism sector of its economic importance and by extension its role in all industries involved in the production of goods and services demanded by visitors which include the agriculture sector. Donald in Vita is the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Tourism, Information and Broadcasting, Culture and Creative Industries. We have gotten to the point where tourism has been dynamically improving and increasing by leaps and bounds on St. Lucia and other Caribbean islands. So its incumbent on us is incumbent on policymakers and we welcome the charge to ensure that we are able to put out research and evidence-based reporting on tourism in the various sub-sectors and generally its performance on our as an economic driver to be able to inform proper policy development and planning and so hopefully in the coming months and years when tourism starts to advocate a little strongly for the various principles under various equipment assets infrastructure and other infrastructure whether it be legal policy and other matters that we are able to back it up with the evidence that is required for persons to understand the importance. Chief Executive Officer of the St. Lucia Hotel and Tourism Association, Nurani Aziz, highlighting the country's dependence on the tourism sector indicated that information is here to making the right decisions so as to benefit not only the sector but the people of St. Lucia. It is only by measuring this growth and interdependence accurately can we know for sure what the true impact of tourism really is and only by measuring tourism accurately can we capture the intelligence to drive innovation and creativity to fully extract the promises of tourism. Tourism satellite account has become the standard bearer and the main tool for the economic measurement of tourism. Developed by the World Tourism Organization the United Nations statistics division and a few other global partners the TSA allows for the harmonization and reconciliation of tourism statistics helping us to measure the consumption of goods and services by visitors and the domestic supply of goods and services to meet this demand. We have come to realize that growth in arrivals is one thing but growth in visitor expenditure can be quite another. Statistician from the St. Lucia Central Statistical Office Anu Lafe provided insight into the TSA. Having compiled the data what occurs is we are the central statistics office together with Stats Canada, Prasak. Okay we're going to compile this data using statistical methods okay and we're going to apply the necessary methods to create a tourism satellite account. It must be noted that confidentiality is a very important element or a very important thing for we at the CSO and a number of checks and balances have been in place to ensure that your information or the information from businesses remain private. The TSA was developed by the World Tourism Organization the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development the Statistical Office of the European Communities and the United Nations Statistics Division. For the Government Information Service I am General Norville.