 The Caribbean's Credit Rating Agency, Caribbean Information and Credit Rating Services Limited, CARICREASE, has reaffirmed the assigned ratings of BBB on its regional rating scale to several debt programs of the government of St. Lucia. These ratings indicate that the level of credit worthiness of these debt obligations, a judge in relation to other debt obligations in the Caribbean, is adequate. The agency has also maintained a stable outlook on the ratings. In a statement, CARICREASE indicated that its stable outlook is premised on the expectation of strong construction activity and a partial recovery in tourism in 2021, and that debt to GDP would not bridge the current rating categories limit. Prime Minister the Honourable Alan Shasne welcomed the ratings. Considering everything that we have been through with COVID, we are very satisfied with where we are at this point. It's a stable outlook and there was no further downgrade of our credit rating. And more importantly, I think that CARICREASE shares our optimism as to what the future holds. And I remind us that we had a 10% increase in the level of debt, which was about $300 million, but we had a decline of 20% or contraction in our economy. Almost 90% of that decline was attributed to tourism. So as we're now seeing tourism rebound and we're really hoping that the UK market opens up very soon, as well as the Canadian market, and we saw some return to our Caribbean market before the end of the year, it is anticipated that we will see a faster recovery of our GDP. And in fact, if by the end of the year the GDP recovers to its pre-COVID level, the debt to GDP would decline well below 70%. The number of arrivals that we're seeing from the US, in fact, we're breaking records out of the US. We reached 82% of our US arrivals in the month of May. And that is a month in which we had broken a record in 2019. We're expecting the numbers in June and July to actually exceed the number of US arrivals that we had in 2019. It is also projected that we would have recovered 50% of our total tourism business by the end of June. On Tuesday, the 29th, June 2021, Cruz Tourism was reintroduced to St. Lucia when the island welcomed Celebrity Millennium, another indicator of the island's impending recovery. The carry-crisp further indicated that debt to GDP would plateau, with borrowings for the Heronora International Airport's redevelopment, but would thereafter decline as COVID-19's negative fiscal impacts begin to taper off. GDP improvements lead to better fiscal performance and fiscal consolidation towards achievement of the Eastern Caribbean currency union's debt to GDP target of 60%. By 2035, it's pursued. This is not something that has come easily. So from March of last year, when we saw the closure of our economy to reopening of our international borders by June of 2020 and the progress that we've made since then, these policies have helped. The policy of implementing shovel-ready projects, the road projects, the airport, St. Jude's, the water projects, improvement of all of our infrastructure around the island has also augured well for us because it's been able to re-employ persons who otherwise would have not been employed. And now that the tourism is recovering, we're starting to see a fuller recovery of our unemployment rates. I was also heartened to hear from my retail and wholesale sectors and the banking industry that the fallout of COVID wasn't as bad as we had anticipated and the policies of the government have worked. So again, this is good news for all of us and certainly we'll continue to instill the confidence that we have seen in our economy and return to some level of normalcy. And again, for all the solutions who have been impacted, know that your government is here with you. We're doing everything we possibly can. Carrie Chris indicated that the ratings on St. Lucia continue to reflect the island's sound financial sector. Despite COVID-19 challenges, broad-based economic activity and moderate GDP strengthening is expected in coming years.