 The National Competitiveness and Productivity Council, NCPC, will celebrate its 10th anniversary during Productivity Awareness Week from October 9th to 13th, 2023. The theme for this year's observance is journey to excellence, leveraging opportunities for collective advancement. Productivity Awareness Week is a signature activity of the NCPC. This activity is being held annually to highlight and promote issues of productivity and competitiveness affecting St. Lucia. Director of the NCPC, Lisa Floramontout, said the theme for this year's observance is reflective of the collaborative work of the NCPC to promote public-private sector dialogue. She highlighted some of the activities for Productivity Awareness Week, 2023. We have several activities planned, the launch, we have a Creole theme for our activities given that it is the month of October and some of our major activities that will be highlighting some of our signature projects such as the Pro Tool, which is a productivity measurement tool and we will also be featuring the Collateral Registry, which is a project that is currently being undertaken and it will be soon launched and we are excited about this, so we will also be featuring this. We will be having a staff, a team building and staff recognition activity where we will be recognising some of the past councils and some of the staff who have contributed towards our 10-year journey. The week will feature what promises to be an enthralling Spelling Bee competition, among Form 3 students from various secondary schools on Ireland. Of course we are quite excited the Ministry of Education to be partnering with the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council. Jennifer Raphael is the Acting Curriculum Officer for English and a member of the Planning Committee. She said the content area of focus is economics, accounts and principles of business. Literacy transcends the curriculum and of course we will have as educators we say content area literacy. So of course we are quite happy because we want to give to our Form 3 students that awareness that not just the spelling but the vocabulary is important in your day to day transactions and interacting as a business student to be productive and competitive of course there are certain keywords and concepts that we want our students to know and so this affords us a beautiful opportunity for our teenagers to have fun and also to learn at the same time. Entrepreneurs and business minded individuals are accommodated during the week via a college style financing expo. Economist with the Department of Economic Development stands to deligne, explains. Okay well it's called the Zafé de Exposition and we would just love to see persons turning out especially the youth to gain more information on financing so we will have information on grants and loan financing so we've invited a number of agencies we're working across the board because we wanted to showcase administrative, we wanted to showcase those providing loan and grant financing as well as products who've benefited from loan and grant financing. A panel discussion on the loss of productivity on the road communication network will air on Wednesday October 11th on NTN. The public is encouraged to follow the activities for productivity awareness week on NTN and the NCPC is Facebook and YouTube pages. For the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council Glenn Simon reporting.