 Welcome to Nation Beat. I am Chynelle Norville bringing you this brief on the pulse of our nation and highlights around the heart of St. Lucia. Invest St. Lucia launches a comprehensive guide to potential investors. Government's new approach to the national development strategy moves to another level and promoting the concept of seed scheme. Potential investors to St. Lucia are now better able to navigate their intent with the introduction of an online investment guide. Invest St. Lucia with the assistance of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the Caribbean Association of Investment Promotion Agencies is implementing the guide which entails, among other things, information on the procedures for starting a business. Invest St. Lucia in an effort to position the island to better attract foreign direct investment and stimulate the local economy on Wednesday officially launched the investment guide or eye guide project. Eye guides provide investors with up-to-date information on business costs, opportunities and conditions in developing countries online. They are designed by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, UNTAD, and the International Chamber of Commerce and are developed jointly with governments and agencies at their request. Invest St. Lucia's investment promotion and fulfillment manager Alana Lansico-Brice highlighted the timeliness of the project. As part of our role of promoting St. Lucia's investment destination as well as facilitating investment, one of the crucial services that we have to provide is the provision of correct and timely information to persons that are interested in our country. So we see the eye guide as augmenting this and enhancing this service delivery. Essentially, persons will be able to access this guide anywhere on the world without having to search through multiple online sources to get information on maybe how to secure a construction permit or how they could go about hiring persons etc. So they'll be able to search the eye guide globally. They don't necessarily have to download a full lengthy document from a website and then have to search through that document manually to obtain information on investing in St. Lucia. Caribbean Association of Investment Promotion Agency, KIPA, is providing assistance on the project. The association's mandate consists of promoting and positioning countries for investment. KIPA's senior advisor for investment promotion, Suzette Hudson, indicated that under the regional investment promotion strategy, the association is focused on promoting the Caribbean and all it has to offer. And within that strategy, we've identified proactive sectors for promotion across the region. We've also identified the need to communicate to investors about the Caribbean. It's amazing. Investors will know about the Caribbean, but they won't necessarily know about the individual territories in the Caribbean. What we want to do is we want to make sure that the Caribbean is so promoted that investors will then, once they've chosen the Caribbean over South America or China, or once they've chosen our region, then they'll say, okay, let me figure out which island or which territory in the Caribbean I will invest. That has been our approach. So that's the other element of our strategy. And the final element of our strategy where this project falls is doing business. It's business advocacy and policy, creating the right environment for investors to come in. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, UNTAD will meet with various ministries and stakeholders to see the project to fruition. UNTAD's economists Ian Richards explained the particulars of the eye guide. Now, the investment guys covers a number of areas, not just how to set up a company, but also what kind of licenses you need to get, depending on what you do, how to pay taxes and what those tax rates are, what kind of skills are available in the country, typical wage expectations, typical contract rules, national insurance, how to get work permits if you need to bring in managers from abroad, also about the infrastructure existing in the country, rules about acquiring or renting land for your project, what is the legal framework, what kind of access you have to foreign markets, and also what are the opportunities. And in this case, we're particularly looking at opportunities in tourism, in manufacturing, and also in the higher value added in reference to agriculture. The eye guide is expected to be completed by February 2019. The St. Lucia Social and Economic Labs, a new approach government has undertaken to develop and deliver the medium term development strategy for 2019-2022, has now gone through the pre-lab phase of focus group discussions on the six key priority areas for government. The key priority areas comprise tourism, agriculture, infrastructure, healthcare, education, and crime. Permanent Secretary in the Department of Economic Development, Transport and Civil Aviation, Philip Dal Su, said he's pleased thus far with the outcome of the first two weeks of the social and economic labs. Completed is the pre-lab phase which engaged various stakeholders from across the island in intense discussions on creating a vision and core priorities for the six areas government has identified to develop a medium term development strategy for St. Lucia. Once we've established the vision and what we would like to accomplish in each of those sectors, the second week has been devoted largely to problem solving. Dal Su noted that each focus group identified specific priorities for their sector. Infrastructure focused on the development of the road network, air and seaports to create capacity for economic growth. Tourism identified a number of hotel concepts across the island that investors would find attractive, while crime focused on the areas of crime prevention, detection, and improvements in the justice system. Honourable Guy Joseph, Minister for Economic Development, Housing, Urban Renewal, Transport and Civil Aviation, said growing the economy should be important to the entire country. He added that government has welcomed the involvement of the various stakeholders participating in the planning process. The work of developing St. Lucia is not the responsibility of just the government and too many times the focus is just on that of government ministers and being held accountable for everything. At the end of the day, if you do not equip the staff with the knowledge, the know-how and what the vision plan is, then it is difficult to expect everybody to deliver on what the overall plan is for the development of St. Lucia. And so the development of the midterm strategy, which is where we want the country to be, is something that is clear to the cabinet of ministers. But getting buying from all of the stakeholders, whether in the private sector or in the public service, is very important. Over the period December 3rd to the 14th, the Social and Economic Labs will focus on detailed implementation plans for the identified projects, some of which are expected to feature in the government's 2019-2020 estimates of revenue and expenditure. For the National Competitiveness and Productivity Unit, Glenn Simon reporting. This is Nation Beat, still to come a look back at the 2018 Atlantic hurricane season. Now 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, here's what you should 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? 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 and this station. Welcome back. The 2018 Atlantic hurricane season officially came to a close November 30 and will be remembered by Hurricanes Florence and Michael and Tropical Storm Cook. On Wednesday, December 5, 2018, the Met Services Department of the Ministry of Infrastructure, Ports, Energy and Labor hosted a press briefing to update on the just concluded Atlantic hurricane season lessons learned and plans for improved early warnings. Although St. Usher was spared the brunt of storm activity, there were several noteworthy events and important lessons. The largest impact was inflicted by Tropical Storm Cook, which resulted in 80% losses in the banana and plantain crops in the agriculture sector. Officers also registered minimal infrastructure damage and disruptions in electricity and telecommunication services. Notably, the internet would always go down and most of our equipment, our communications, rely on the internet. So I believe we need some kind of redundancy or we need some kind of other form of communications which will allow web access which will bypass the terrestrial system of internet that we have. The director of Met Services, Vinances Descartes, says despite the island being relatively spared, St. Usher should pay close attention to the post-season outlook which poses several threats. The director of Met Services also encourages St. Lucian to continue monitoring weather reports, remain vigilant and keep disaster preparedness as a priority. From the Government Information Service, Lister Joseph reporting. The local leg of roadshows promoting the concept of safe schools and the implementation of the model safe school program in the Caribbean project was executed recently at several schools on the island. Chris Satney has more in this report. The activity, complete with mascot, jingle and roadshow paraphernalia, took the format of a school assembly. It is being used as an exciting and entertaining way to sensitize youth, teachers, parents and the public on the processes that result in safer and greener educational facilities as well as to inform them of the implementation of the project, its aim and the role they play in ensuring its success. Project coordinator Bernice Godra says the activity, funded by the Caribbean Development Bank, CDB, through the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, SEDEMA addressed the key topics during the series of events. With this program, we are going to look at many areas in your school that we are going to try to make safe. And we are going to look at things like the green components, like planting of trees and flowers, taking care of the environment so that you will not litter, you will put your garbage in the bins, you will get rid of your garbage properly. So we want to join with you as we continue to make our schools a safer and a better place for all of you. Throughout the Caribbean region, the education sector is said to be highly vulnerable to the range of natural hazards that threaten the countries of the region. The director of the National Emergency Management Organization, Nemo Felder-Joseph, welcomes the introduction of the program in schools, lamenting significant damage and losses experienced by the education sector due to the impact of natural hazards, particularly over the last two decades. School safety is very, very important and we need you, we need your support from this very young age to indicate to the rest of the world to indicate to the rest of St. Lucia that we need to place emphasis on safe schools, making sure that your school, that your environment is safe. There are a lot of things that can cause harm to you even within your school environment and there are things that you can do to stop that from happening. In order to address some of the evident vulnerabilities of the education sector, a toolkit was developed by the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency, SIDEMA to guide governments on the development of national safe school policies and to offer tools for assessing the level of safety and the greening of schools in member states. From the Communications Unit of the Ministry of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development, I am Chris Satney reporting. That's nation beat to join us next time on NTN at 7.30pm with a repeat at 7.30am and on this station as we fill the pulse and heart of our community. You can also catch up with us anytime on the St. Lucia Government Facebook page or YouTube channel. I am General Norville.