 Minister for Economic Development, Housing, Urban Renewal, Transport and Civil Aviation. Dr. Justin Ram, Director of Economics, Caribbean Development Bank. Justin, I know you are joining us by a feed virtually. Can you hear us? Yes, good. And I also understand Ronald is also joining us also. Mr. Christopher Chu, Engagement Manager for the San Luzha Social and Economic Labs. Members of the PairManDo team. Senior Public Officers. Members of the Project Staring Committee and staff of the Economic Development Division. And other invited guests. Members of the media, good morning. Today I am extremely delighted to welcome you to this launch of the San Luzha Social and Economic Labs. Now some of you here may be wondering what is it that we are doing? Are we experimenting on economic and social issues? But I am sure by the end of this press conference you will have a clearer understanding of what the social and economic labs are. Before we actually go into this though, I would like to give you a sense of the journey of how we got to this stage. It all started when I and the Permanent Secretary of Finance attended a Caribbean Leadership and Transformation Forum which was hosted by the Caribbean Development Bank in September of 2017. At that conference a number of issues were raised and these included one, the issue of low implementation rates for projects and programs across the Caribbean and there were some startling statistics revealed. The OECS countries had the lowest implementation rate. Most of them hovering around 45 percent. So this was really an issue for those countries to address and the data we had really spanned a very long period of time. And it showed that many of the interventions that we had undertaken were not successful. At that conference we also heard from Dr. Idris Jalla from Permandu in terms of the work that Malaysia had undertaken. They were in the same similar situation as us and the work that they had done and how it had impacted very favorably on the implementation rates of projects and programs. We also heard from Sir Michael Barber of Delivery Associates in terms of the work that he had done while he worked in the Prime Minister's office in the United Kingdom. We also heard from the work that both Delivery Associates and Permandu had done across the world and the success stories that they gave us in terms of improving implementation rates of projects and programs. The piece of financing myself before this was a very good idea and a novel approach to integrating the planning and implementation of projects and programs in a more cohesive and structured way. I approached my minister and told him about this approach and that CDB had offered support to allow us to adopt this new methodology. And we had to submit a cabinet paper and I know the minister had some convincing to do to really get the cabinet to approve this approach in terms of how we would look at improving the implementation rates of our projects and programs. After the approval was given we had discussions with CDB and Dr Ram and his team and they were very supportive and we had a retreat, a cabinet retreat and also a workshop for senior officials in the public and private sector. At that retreat the cabinet defined the six key priority areas, force and lucha and the senior officials and the private sector defined some of the game changes. Of course cabinet also gave their ideas on what some of those game changes are. The retreat and the workshop were a resounding success and cabinet had no hesitation in approving the continuation to the next phase which is what we are launching today. And to give you some more on this and in terms of the journey and the approach I would like to ask Dr Justin Ram of the CDB who has been an enthusiastic supporter of this approach and really is really looking at the lucha as I wouldn't say the guinea pig but the early starter the pioneer in the Caribbean and to see how this can work for us so that it can be replicated across the Caribbean. So Justin if you are there I would invite you to say a few words. Great, okay good. Good morning P.S. Dalso. Good morning as well. Are you hearing me? Hi Justin, we are hearing you. Yes, we continue. Okay, I'm getting some feedback I'm wondering if it could be a little bit on your ear or is that well so today actually marks the launch of what we consider to be a pioneering time for the Caribbean and the Netherlands growing number of countries. Saint Lucia being the first country to go ahead and implement what we believe to be an outstanding methodology to improve implementation rates for public sector projects and policies. Now back in May of this year under the patronage of the Honourable Prime Minister Alan Chastonay and members of his cabinet we hosted a cabinet retreat with all of the cabinet ministers and with consultants from Pehmandu out of Malaysia under the guidance of their head Trade Idris Jala to go through with this Saint Lucia cabinet what are the likely priorities for Saint Lucia over the next five years or so. Now coming out of that as P.S. Dalso mentioned the cabinet identified six key areas three of them economic and those are tourism agriculture and infrastructure and on social issues healthcare education and crime. So coming out of that cabinet retreat we have a clear mandate as to what are the priorities for Saint Lucia over the medium term. The next phase of this process is how do you go about implementing projects and policies that would improve outcome in each of those six key areas and what we did last week through the careful guidance of P.S. Dalso and his team in Saint Lucia we have now approved financing to Saint Lucia to support this program. Now this program will involve and I know you're going to hear more about it soon but it now involves what's called laboratories whereby key officials from government from the private sector from civil society will be gathered together for a few weeks at a time to work on these priority areas to see how these can be implemented and to develop implementation plan. After those implementation plans are I guess finalized or in draft stage I should say those plans are taken to the population so the population can see what it is all of the stakeholders that were present in that room have come up with and so to get public buy-in so there might be some individuals who say no you have got this wrong or you've certainly have got this right it is to get population consensus on these implementation plans. Now after that is done of course the government will then publish details of the medium-term development strategy and the implementation plans that go along with that and then it's a task of now setting out how do you go about implementing this so that these plans are no longer like the plans that we tend to see in most of our joint member countries glossy documents but at the end of the day they are never implemented this approach that we are proposing here is meant to now eradicate that particular issue and it is now a focus on strategic implementation of these plans that means that we will also be facilitating the setting up of what's called a delivery unit within the center of government and that delivery unit will be employing key individuals who can work with government agencies who can work with the private sector who can work with the civil civil society organizations to ensure that these priority implementation plans are implemented on time and more importantly that a population is kept abreast of what is happening so a key component of this is greater accountability to the population from government about what they said that they were going to do. Now I know that PS Dalso and Minister Guy Joseph and the consultants would speak in more detail about this but just to let me say to you that we are the Caribbean Development Bank are very proud of the work that St Lucia is doing here. St Lucia is showing itself to be a pioneer and we are really hopeful that what comes out of this will be lessons that our Bahrain member countries and the rest of the Caribbean can learn from so once more I just want to simply say that St Lucia you are ahead of the game here you are doing what we certainly would like to see all of our other Bahrain member countries do and so we applaud you for being pioneers and for taking this novel approach which really has had significant impacts in other parts of the world where it has also been been implemented. So I thank you very much PS Dalso. Thank you Dr Ram for one outlining the methodology and the approach of the labs and the delivery units and I would also like to take the opportunity on behalf of the government St Lucia to really thank the Caribbean Development Bank who has really wholeheartedly supported us in this process and has made it a reality. So once again thanks again through the Caribbean Development Bank for their support. I would now like to invite the Honourable Minister to make some remarks on the approach. He is the lead minister and a champion. I know that he is very much supportive of this initiative and really is advocating for an approach that will increase the implementation of projects and programs across the Government of St Lucia. So Honourable Minister, my pleasure to invite you to the podium. Let me adopt the protocol already established and see a pleasant good morning to all. It's a pleasure to stand here to be identified with a programme of this nature. Workshops, seminars, things that we hear a lot about and I am happy to see the launch of this programme today. I'm happy because it took some convincing to get the Cabinet to come out for a full day to come to another workshop because when the question was put to everybody, another workshop, another seminar, but the launch of this special programme in St Lucia which is focused on two specific areas, the economic side and the social side of our development. The labs as we were introduced to it is one that is interesting and different. It is not what we have been used to doing in the past where you just come in and you have documents and somebody makes a presentation. Maybe I would like to take you through the challenge that we had and how exciting it became towards the end because after my colleague ministers, after we attended the Sunday session, though some of them did it reluctantly, by the end of the session everybody concluded that this was the best seminar and workshop that we had attended because of what we were able to accomplish. Because the selection of the areas was not a choice that I made as Minister for Economic Development or the Prime Minister made as the Prime Minister of the country, but it was a joint effort between everybody because of the method that was used. Everybody was put into different groups and these groups had to come up with the key areas and then you had to vote and nobody knew where the other person was voting because each person was given their own voting device to vote and that is how we came up with the list of areas that we believe would be game changers in St. Louis. We were very happy about the approach specifically because it focused in two key areas, the area of economic growth and development and the area of meeting the social needs of the country. I know of Litt, even what appears on the social side is now being can also fit under the economic side and I will highlight some of that as we go along. Our focus on the labs methodology would be in a couple of phases and I would allow the persons who are handling the labs to give you greater details of how it is going to work the timelines on what we expect to accomplish. But in the medium term we expect that by 2022 we would have realized what we are discussing here to a great measure. It is always good to set timelines because having a plan and not knowing when it is going to materialize is not the best. The approach that we are taking also is not an approach of one particular government or administration but it is a country approach and that is why the lead persons would be the permanent established workers of the government of St. Lucia and that is why you are such an integral part of what is happening because we expect this to span across administrations across governments and that it becomes it becomes something that the whole country has buying into and that is why we know the permanent secretaries were engaged and also the private sector have been engaged in this process because the development of St. Lucia and our future depends on all of us not just the government not just the elected parliamentarians but everyone in general. We are also very happy that the Caribbean Development Bank give us support from the inception of this program and I must highlight Dr. Rank because from the CDB he was the champion for us in St. Lucia in seeing to it that this program materializes as we are having it today so from the inception of a grant and the support and making it possible to be there to make it happen and also in facilitating the process of us getting the loan and I must also thank PS for the hard work and the team within the Ministry of Economic Development because it is taxing when you have so many things to do and to pay attention to so many things at the same time. So the delivery units that have been set up and I know that some of them have been meeting with the team but I also want to highlight that this is an initiative being taken while Pemando is is the one of the well the lead agency we were dealing with but the labs is in association with delivery associates who have been very much who would be involved in that process in taking us through the next stage of the development of this project. Now this is not just a project as you heard from Dr. Rank for a report that will be placed on a shelf in a box on a computer somewhere. This is a program that is result oriented that they are going to be clear measurements so whether myself as the Minister if I have not met my obligations it will be highlighted and every line officer with responsibility we would be able to pinpoint the areas that we have failed if we fail and we should be able to pinpoint the areas that needs improvement because it is something that involves the whole cabinet because when we look at the areas and I will highlight the six key result areas that we are looking at I would do like PS and start on the social side which highlights health care education and crime we believe that with the discussions taking place in St. Lucia today that health care is top priority and see most recently from the World Bank it has been clearly indicated that health care and education are not just on the social side but has a direct impact on the economic output of any country and so it can fit either under the social side or under the economic side because if you have a healthy nation the level of productivity is greater if you have a well educated and equipped workforce your output is also greater so this would have a direct impact on the economic side of the equation so if we were to split it down the middle I believe these could fall and so would crime because crime could impact us very negatively based on our heavy dependence upon the tourism sector now looking at the economic side tourism being the lead driver of economic growth as identified then followed by agriculture and there is a direct correlation between tourism and agriculture the more the more tourists you get come into the country the better chances of our agricultural sector surviving because it means you have more people to feed you have more people to cater for so there can be greater production but it's not just agriculture for the tourism sector but it is agriculture that is focused on reducing the food import bill in St. Lucia and to make us more sustainable and more self dependent when it comes to what we can produce and how we can produce it so we look at these key areas and infrastructure there are limits to how much we can grow this economy if you do not have proper infrastructure and you would agree that it's a nightmare being on the roads these days because of the traffic volumes so how much we can grow as a country is directly related to our capacity with infrastructure so if we do not have sufficient road network if we cannot produce enough water then how can we grow this economy the way that we need to grow it and the reality that faces us is that as you heard from PS our level of implementation as a country for whatever reasons things take much longer than they should the lab will help us to identify some of the shortcomings and some of the things we need to do to make us more effective now this is not that that is why I said it is not a situation of a government but it is a country approach because our limitations at the ports so take for example we have entered the cruise season what happens during that time is that the cargo ships have to wait out there until the cruise ships have left because we are sharing one port for both cargo and cruise tourism that is a limitation in infrastructure to how much we can develop because it is costing us more to have the ships out there waiting most recently one of the ships had to leave and go to Barbados and discharge the cargo there and then get a smaller vessel to so you find all of these challenges so when we speak about a wholesome development a development that is necessary if we are going to grow sufficiently given where we are with the economy and I've said it before 4% growth will not cut it for us it's not even going to erase our deficit budget we need more than that how are we going to accomplish that as a country do we want it to get to a crisis situation where somebody else makes the decisions for us or are we going to make the decisions for ourselves today and be determined that we are going to make our country successful and that is what this team is going to help us to accomplish they cannot do it for us the fact of the matter is we will have to do it for ourselves they can give us a roadmap they can help us to know how to navigate and what we need to do but the responsibility falls squarely on us as a people and I know we have the capacity and the capability so with what delivery associates and Perman do would be doing for us would just be helping us it is how we receive it and what we decide to do with it that will count in the end so I would like to announce the call for the private sector possibly to ex to submit expressions of interest for projects in two key result areas in the economic sector namely tourism and agriculture we would request that these companies to submit the expressions of interest to undertake projects and investments in the following areas in tourism we can consider international hotel brands interested in investing in St Lucia the cruise operators looking to make St Lucia a home pot health and wellness tourism village tourism ecotourism all of these are areas that the private sector can play a lead role in assisting in growing the economy in the agricultural sector we have production of food as a means of import substitution and over the years we've spoken about by local but as a government we have failed to take the lead in doing so and I've said it we have enough furniture manufacturers in St Lucia I would like to sit behind a desk in my office that is made in St Lucia I would like to sit on a chair that is made in St Lucia because it is not just the food import bill that we need to reduce we need to reduce the overall import bill and see how much more we can produce locally and unless we are going to take the lead as government the procurement officers the various leaders in the ministries we are not going to get the rest of the country to buy in because we are not leading by example so it is something for us to consider moving forward what is going to be our approach towards supporting local so when we talk about production of food as a means of import substitution I want to extend it to other areas because of the positive impact these decisions would have on the economy overall I've said to the department what type of house should I build as minister of housing that is going to have the greatest impact on the local economy what materials we should we use to build a house and if we can identify these and even if it costs more then the government should offer a subsidy or the government should give concessions to offset the price so that you can use more of your local products in the construction sector that is how we build our economy so we have that then under the agricultural sector we have the food processing projects we have production of high value high yield crops that encourage crop diversification we have seen the vulnerability of our banana sector a storm that did not even qualify us to get the insurance payments devastated the banana sector I have to compliment our farmers because of their resilience because the day after the storm they were back on the fields replanting and chopping and doing what is necessary but we also we from the time as a child growing up I've been hearing about diversification and we are in 2018 and we are still speaking about diversification and we have not seen the impact that we need to see while there have been some level of diversification not to the extent that we should have had as of today and production of sample crops so these are areas that the private sector can engage with the government and see what can be done in helping us in these sectors of the economy and I am I am sure that the addresses that is to be given will be given and the the agencies to be contacted with submissions would be done but I want to assure the team that is present here with us today from Pemandu and from delivery associates that we are committed to this project I want to assure Dr. Ram and the CDB that the resources being put towards this will not go in vain we are determined to bring our level up in terms of implementation we are determined to turn around the economy of this country and to make ourselves more productive we are not the only ones other people they are doing it we can do it for ourselves as a country and so I encourage all the participants across ministries involved in this project not to treat it as just another set of workshops and seminars to go on your resume but to make it something that is going to bring us the desired results that we are looking for that we all can be proud of the work that we would have done for the future of this country I thank you thank you minister for sharing your thoughts on some of the critical economic and social issues affecting Saint Lucia especially within the key priority areas that have been identified as you indicated we don't want to see this as just another workshop and leadership will be critical to make this initiative a resounding success and I know as the lead minister and a champion at the policy level we can count on you to really help us navigate any roadblocks that we may get along our journey in making this new methodology and approach a success as you indicated Saint Lucia's economic growth rates over the last 10 15 years have been really suboptimal and we need to really accelerate the rate of economic growth if we are to achieve inclusive and sustainable development by 2020 and help to reduce poverty increase employment and the standard of living so this initiative we're really counting on it to be a resounding success and part of the approach as the minister highlighted is that we really want to encourage the private sector to participate in the initiative and to have a an economy that is led by the private sector and the government being the enabler too often we hear in small island economies that the public sector is the engine of growth we need to change that paradigm and to really get and encourage and promote the private sector to be the lead sector in the economy to invest and to grow the economy so this is going to take a lot of commitment from all of us here and as the minister said it's not something that we can have hair man do and delivery associates they are helping us but we have to take ownership and really make this happen we're counting on new hair the focal points the members of the project steering committee to really make this this project a reality a success at this point also I really want to thank the economic development team who've really been committed to making this a success and in particular to highlight three individuals who have worked along with me Nadia Kerry and Skeeter I know we've had some eight o'clock meetings in the morning when it's eight o'clock in Malaysia and sometimes when I was out I was having meetings at like 10 o'clock in Bali or just because of the big time difference but we had to really stick to it to ensure that we could make this project a reality at this point I would like to call on Mr Christopher Chu the engagement manager for St Lucia social and economic labs to give you some more information on the labs and the process and the timelines please thank you and good morning to Honorable Minister, Minister Guy Joseph, Permanent Secretary Philip Delsu, Dr Justin Rahm from Caribbean Development Bank as well as members of the Government of St Lucia and members of the press good morning and on behalf of Permanent Associates and delivery associates we would like to thank the Government of St Lucia for your warm hospitality in receiving us and your high level of commitment in executing and successfully commencing the St Lucia social and economic labs my name is Chris Chu I'm the engagement manager representing Permanent Associates and we are a global management consulting firm which specializes in public sector transformation, business turnaround and strategic communications and our organization has worked with the highest levels of government and top executives all over the world to deliver on their national agenda and business objectives in a sustainable and inclusive manner here in St Lucia we're delighted to work together with delivery associates and the Government of St Lucia to implement this important reform agenda over the next 15 months this 15 month period will comprise of two phases phase one will be the development phase or what we have termed the lab methodology which I will explain in a short moment and phase two will comprise of the implementation phase which we'll commence next year so I would just like to explain a little bit around the lab methodology the lab methodology is a radical and dynamic methodology that has been deployed all over the world in countries in Asia Africa the Middle East Eastern Europe and today the Caribbean it is a methodology that focuses on refining and translating strategic intent into measurable targets with detailed implementation programs clear budget requirements and clear governance structures so here in St Lucia this lab will take place over the next seven weeks commencing this week in three stages stage one is what we would term the preparation stage or the pre-lab stage during this stage the project team will work with stakeholders to validate and analyze data conduct interviews conduct site visits and ultimately set the visions and goals for each of the six key results areas in addition as announced by Minister Joseph the Government of St Lucia is calling for submissions of expressions of interest for projects from the private sector under the tourism and agriculture key result areas therefore during this preparation stage the project team will assess and prioritize these projects through a rigorous filtering process and identify the project owners that will be invited into the next stage the next stage is what we term the focus group stage and this stage commences on the 20th of November over a period of two weeks the focus groups will involve intense discussions and workshops with all stakeholders involved in various programs initiatives and projects in each of the six key result areas during this phase project owners who have been identified will be invited to come and present their business ideas and their projects in this stage relevant government stakeholders will also be present to unblock and remove any obstacles that are hindering these project owners from a smooth and effective implementation the focus group stage will also assess the impact of each and every project for social sectors programs and initiatives identified will be assessed against the impact that they contribute towards delivering on social outcomes for economic sectors assessments will be made in terms of contribution to GDP growth job creation and investments the final stage of this process is what we would term the lab stage and during this stage stakeholders from all the key result areas will detail out implementation plans for the projects that have been already identified these implementation plans include budget requirements government structures any policy amendments that will need to be made and so on and so forth key performance indicators will also be developed for each project and initiative so that every project that is established will achieve the goals set out for the overall key result area also during this stage details for the establishment of a delivery unit will be finalized including the structure roles and responsibilities manpower requirements and other aspects finally this stage will culminate in a gallery walk session involving the prime minister the honorable members of the cabinet permanent secretaries and other key stakeholders with the objective of obtaining final endorsement or the recommendations and providing the mandate to move forward into implementation to wrap things up the post lab phase will commence next year and during this post lab phase the team will work closely with the government of St Lucia and other stakeholders to finalize the establishment of St Lucia's delivery unit in this stage of finalizing the governance structure for this delivery unit processes will include recruiting high caliber staff establishing data collection mechanisms performance dashboards and all other related monitoring routines following this stage the team will hand over all of these findings to the government of St Lucia for effective implementation without much further ado I'd like to pass the time back to PS Dalsu for any questions thank you thank you Chris for outlining the the lab methodology as you indicated you have a pre lab the labs and the post labs hopefully by the time we get to the post labs we'd have established the delivery unit and we can take it on and continue the process we do have a very tight time frame within which we are going to be implementing this program we would like to ensure that it's aligned with the budget process and it actually impacts and influences the budget for 2019-2020 another very important output of this process will be the development of the medium term development strategy for 2019-2022 as well as CDB has also indicated that they would want to use the outputs of this process to develop the country's strategy paper for St Lucia for that same period 2019-2022 so it is a very tight window and it's going to really count on us and all of the other agencies who we have met already to really make this a reality it's going to require commitment and dedication and to ensure that we put the required resources and ensure that we actually to ensure that we actually can conclude the process by I think the labs is December the 14th okay so at this point I'd like to ask if there are any questions I don't want to press there are not many of them around but CBS left so but we will indicate to the private sector what the email addresses would be to submit their proposals and we will also be informing the stakeholders very shortly of the dates for the respective meetings so thank you and I'd like to thank the minister for attending and also indicating his strong commitment to this process to the the pair mandu team led by Chris was I know been working very intensely for the first week that they've been here the members of the project steering committee the budget team I know that we've worked with you and the economic and finally the economic development team who I know you know it's been an a responsibility an additional responsibility but one that I believe will be well worth it and help to improve the overall process by which our department work program is actually being run thank you all