 The Attorney General's chambers has announced St. Lucia's completion of its 2022 Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing National Risk Assessment. The National Risk Assessment forms a critical part of St. Lucia's effective application of its risk-based program. The risk assessment allows the country to identify, assess and understand its exposure to money laundering and terrorist financing, and implement measures to mitigate the identified risks. Juliana Alfred, Permanent Secretary in the Attorney General's chambers, and chair of the National Anti-Money Laundering Oversight Committee, NAMLOC, said the committee has been working assiduously to ensure St. Lucia's readiness for re-rating. We've had quite a bit of legislative amendments undertaken. We've had a lot of consultation with various stakeholders, and very importantly, we've undertaken a national risk assessment. So our last national risk assessment was done sometime in 2019, and we completed the recent one in 2022. This risk assessment has said to us that we had medium overall for money laundering and for terrorism financing, we had medium-low. In 2019, St. Lucia was assessed as medium-high for money laundering and medium for terrorist financing. It's clear, based on what we are seeing from the national risk assessment, that the efforts that the committee and St. Lucia has placed in addressing the deficiencies are paying off. So we're very happy about that. In addition to the legislative amendments, we have been working with the stakeholders so that they understand what the risks are in terms of FATF's requirements and ensuring that they have their compliance measures in place to address these risk measures. Attorney General Leslie Mondizzi indicated that the government has passed a suite of legislative amendments, including money laundering legislation, anti-terrorism, proceeds of crime, virtual assets legislation, and the mutual legal assistance legislation. Well I think the government so far is satisfied with the work of the National Anti-Money Laundering Committee. I've been briefing cabinet as to the progress and so far we have satisfied with the progress of the committee so far, in light of the fact that we are applying for a re-rating in November later this year. The completion of St. Lucia's risk assessment was a collaborative approach, engaging key stakeholders from both the private and public sectors, including the Financial Intelligence Authority, Customs and Excise, the Royal St. Lucia Police Force, Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Inland Revenue Department, and the Financial Services Regulatory Authority at the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank. It is going to form a critical part of our re-rating process in November. In fact I'm happy to report that St. Lucia is applying for 22 recommendations that were partially compliant or non-compliant. And I'm not in a position to say what the changes will be, but I can safely say that we are very happy with the feedback that we are receiving in terms of the work St. Lucia has undertaken. Work continues with the augmentation of resources, including personnel, technological tools and training to improve the regulatory and investigative capacities of competent authorities. For the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council, Glenn Simon reporting.