 Welcome to Nation Beat. I am Janelle Norville bringing you this brief on the purse of our nation and highlights around the heart of St. Lucia. The Government of St. Lucia is well on its way to improving its standing with international lending institutions. St. Lucia's are encouraging advantage of government bonds and another employer in a key economic sector invests in the health of its workers. St. Lucia is well on its way to improving its standing with international lending institutions by ensuring that projects are properly delivered and implemented. The island has been chosen to pilot a new program supported by the Caribbean Development Bank for the training of public servants and creation of a performance management and delivery unit. Minister for Finance and Prime Minister of St. Lucia, the Honourable Allen Shastney, requested the approval to borrow from the Caribbean Development Bank an amount exceeding 4,927,210 US dollars, consisting of a special funds resources portion in the amount of 2,463,605 US dollars and an ordinary capital resources portion in the amount of 2,463,605 US dollars for the purpose of undertaking the project. The delivery unit when established will oversee the implementation of the medium term development strategy 2019-2022, get towards achieving an inclusive and sustainable St. Lucia by 2022. Honourable Shastney dived further into the venture. So we currently have workshops about to take place in six sectors and so all of the agencies that are involved in the work program and the implementation of those sectors will be involved in this discussion and so we will have dedicated professionals from each one of those sectors participating to review the policy strategy that we have for those sectors. Six lab workshops consisting of senior public and private officials and technicians will be held over a nine-week period with the aim of mapping out detailed gender response plans. Parliamentary representative for Castry Southeast, Guy Joseph highlighted the importance of the training exercises and the strategy going forward. So what I'm saying is that when you involve everybody and you get buying from all persons, what you are doing is you are helping the people of St. Lucia to understand the importance of having results-oriented projects. Mr. Speaker, we start things and they don't finish. We build temporary things and they become permanent. We start at one price and it ends up doubling the price. There are countless examples of that in St. Lucia, you know. But at the end of the day, if as a country, we would not stop for a moment and take stock and say the way we have been doing it in the past is not giving us the desired results and that is what this seminar is about. The strategy focuses on six priority areas including tourism, agriculture, infrastructure, healthcare, education and national security. Parliamentary representative for Ancillary Canary's Dominic Fede threw his support behind the motion. This initiative which our government is undertaking and embarking upon in partnership with the Pamdu organization out of Malaysia is one that is very timely, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, you see in small countries like ours, where we lack the resources and where we may lack the economies of scale, Mr. Speaker, it becomes even more imperative that we compensate for that with economies of speed and that we, Mr. Speaker, ensure that we leverage and maximize the efficiencies that small countries like us need. But Mr. Speaker, you see when you focus on efficiencies of implementation in areas like healthcare and education, what you do, Mr. Speaker, is that you create a more enabling environment. During phase one, the labs will identify issues and opportunities, priority solutions and develop detailed implementation plans for execution over the next four years. After the completion of phase one, phase two will commence and involves the establishment of a delivery unit within the government of St. Lucia. The debt and investment unit in the Department of Finance believes the level of financial literacy in St. Lucia must be improved significantly to encourage more St. Lucia to take advantage of investment opportunities. Their unit urges opportunities for investment in government bonds and treasury bills with very attractive interest rates. Glenn Simon has more. St. Lucia's public debt is an area of significant interest to the citizenry. Public debt or national debt refers to how much a country owes to lenders outside of itself. The debt and investment unit in the Department of Finance is mandated to raise the required funding to finance the budget at a minimum cost with a prudent degree of risk. Deputy Director of Finance responsible for debt and investment, Vera John Emmanuel, said her unit is also responsible for managing and servicing the national debt. The unit's operations are manned by six highly skilled staff who utilize three main instruments to manage the public debt. We utilize the bonds which are instruments from five years in the term up to 10 years and those bonds go as a maximum rate of 7.25 and that depends on how long you go in terms of your investment with this instrument. We also have the treasury bills which are shorter term instruments and it goes up to from 91 days to 1 a and we also have loans which we contract from multilateral or bilateral creditors. So these are the three instruments that government utilize in terms of funding the budget. She said approximately 25 cents of every dollar from revenue goes to servicing the national debt and the government of St. Lucia has always been able to meet its debt obligations. So it's a significant amount of monies which we pay in terms of debt service so that's why it is so critical that we manage and pay this debt on time. The Debt and Investment Unit in collaboration with the International Monetary Fund IMF and the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank ECCB recently conducted an investor relations workshop. The objective was to strengthen government's relations with investors of bonds and treasury bills whilst expanding its investor base. Emmanuel noted that public sensitization on other forms of investment ranks high on the unit's agenda. Take advantage of the opportunities that we have now in terms of bonds, government bonds and treasury bills. It's a good opportunity. The deputy director added that via these instruments investors can make a contribution to the development of the country while at the same time realize excellent returns. With a minimum of 5,000 EC dollars, Emmanuel said anyone can participate in the auction on the regional government securities market or over the counter to gain returns as high as 7.25% on their investment. Interest person, she said, can contact the Debt and Investment Unit at telephone number 468-5536 for more details. For the National Competitiveness and Productivity Unit, Glenn Simon reporting. This is Nation Beat. Another employer in a key economic sector pays attention to the health of its workers. The world's climate is changing and that affects all of us. Storms are becoming increasingly intense. Periods of intense drought and heavy rain stress farm animals and destroy our crops. Higher average ocean temperatures kill our coral reefs and change the migratory patterns of fish. St. Lucia contributes only 0.0015% of global greenhouse gas emissions, but is doing its part along with countries around the world to reduce the emissions that are warming our world and changing our climate. These efforts are called mitigation. But decades of emissions have already changed the climate and the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere today will increase average global temperatures even more. We need to adapt, that is, do everything we can to prepare for and respond to the actual and expected negative effects of climate change and everyone has a role to play. We need to protect our crops, build homes that withstand storms and keep our drains and waterways free of garbage to help us recover or bounce back from climatic events. Learn more about the government of St. Lucia's National Adaptation Plan and the steps you can take to protect yourself and your fellow St. Lucia's. Welcome back. The government of St. Lucia through the Department of Sustainable Development continued its national adaptation planning process with a two day consultation with the private sector. The government has recognized the critical role played by the private sector and civil society organizations in the development and implementation of sustainable development and climate change adaptation initiatives. In light of this, the government has engaged social partners inspired in the development of a climate change private sector engagement strategy. The strategy will identify the key private sector stakeholders that must be involved to help build climate resilience and address the adverse effects of climate change, how they can best be engaged, recommendations on incentives and disincentives and guidance on strategic alliances, including the Republic Private Partnerships PPP. Don Pianothoniel is the Deputy Chief Sustainable Development and Environment Officer. We are therefore here with the consultants from Climate Analytics as well as the stakeholders to be able to get input into seeing how best can we engage the private sector in building climate resilience across St. Lucia and specifically whether we could come up with one or two key proposals that will allow the private sector to work closely with the public sector in identifying those measures and implementing those measures through submission, through an identified funding source. The initiative is seen as a priority specifically recommended by officials at the NAP Assembly that was held earlier this year and attended by a number of ministers, permanent secretaries, other heads and a large cross-section of stakeholders. We were able to get to the endorsement of the Cabinet of Ministers for this National Adaptation Plan and the sectoral adaptation strategies and action plans. Among the measures identified in the NAP were measures to help in building climate resilience involving the private sector. So we were fortunate having gotten this endorsement from the Cabinet of Ministers that the U.S. in country support program through the National Adaptation Plan Global Network that is International Institute for Sustainable Development were able to give us some funding to help us with this endeavor. The two-day national consultation ended on Tuesday 20 November at the Coco Palm Hotel. From the government information service, Lisa Joseph reporting. For the first time, Forster and Inge Cruz services came on board the health battleship with the aim of strengthening their workforce pillars and by extension creating a healthier nation. Hers Miguel Morissette. Forster and Inge Cruz services recently partnered with the Ministry of Health and Wellness in hosting a health fair. While the health fair was in compliance with the observance of World Diabetes Awareness Month, the organization took a holistic approach to ensure a healthy team. Heidi Kodra is a family life educator in the Ministry of Health. When we look at communities, the workforce is one of the biggest community and then we always encourage the work or the business places basically to make health a priority especially for their staff. With a healthy workforce, you then you get productivity. So this is the aim basically to get the businesses come, let them come together and Forster and Inge came on from Inception. When we spoke about it, I came to them and they thought it was a really good initiative and this is their first health fair. So they're excited and we can see the staff coming out. They come in to do their tests and know their numbers and also to do their own examinations. Some of the health services offered on the day included dental, HIV, diabetic, breast examinations, among others. Meanwhile, tour operator Nell Ones said while some people are reluctant to visit the doctors, others are faced with time constraints. We deal with the international market. We're trying to enforce a healthy workforce. So the guides, they're very busy. So we're actually bringing this to them. We tag up with Ministry of Health. So we had the health fair being today's a quiet day so they could come and get online information they need. Ones added that the collective noun family goes beyond the household. She applauded foster and in-school services for this innovative approach and for keeping with the 2018 Diabetes theme, the family and diabetes. For the communications unit in the Ministry of Health and Wellness, Miguel Morris said reporting. That's nation beat. Join us next time on NTN at 7 30 p.m. with a repeat at 7 30 a.m. 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.