 Welcome to NTIA Nightly. I am Janelle Norville. This edition stops stories. Government continues to roll out programs under the Economic Recovery and Resilience Plan and the Ministry of Agriculture's efforts prove successful. The COVID-19 roadmap to recovery panel series on Sunday focused on St. Lucia's Economic Recovery and Resilience Plan. The Government of St. Lucia has already commenced the rollout of several of the programs outlined in the plan. Anisia Antoine tells us more. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the timeline for the implementation of critical reform initiatives. The Government has launched its Economic Recovery and Resilience Plan as part of its three-pronged response strategy, a comprehensive roadmap to St. Lucia's recovery as its soldiers on the fight against COVID-19. The Economic Recovery and Resilience Plan, budgeted at an estimated cost of $548 million, is the collective effort of a multi-stakeholder committee comprising private and public sectors and civil society. The objectives of the Resilience Plan have been aligned to six pillars, including reducing the impact of both global and domestic economic contraction on the economy, protecting the poor and vulnerable, and driving economic activity through the commencement and continuation of public sector capital investment projects. Chief Economist in the Department of Finance Research and Policy Unit, Shanae Leos, explained that pillar one is focused on providing a suite of fiscal policy interventions, such as incentivizing the commercial banking sector to lend to medium, small and micro enterprises to enable private sector business continuity. There are elements in there that speak to how can you offer assistance to the poor and vulnerable and how can you offer assistance to your business community as well, because both are critical as you sort of lay that foundation to rebound and rebuild. In pillar one, you also have at least two initiatives with respect to providing financing to your micro, small and medium enterprises as well. So pillar one is focused on your business community, is focused on your poor and vulnerable, and it's really sort of laying the groundwork that to the extent that you are able to stabilize those two cohorts of persons that can lay the foundation for the resiliency of the moving forward. Chief Economist in the Department of Economic Development, Tommy Descat, elaborated on the third pillar, which strives to protect the poor and the most vulnerable and mitigate further deterioration in the quality of life. The social interventions here is really good at ensuring that we sort of mitigate and curtail that impact. So one of the things I think the government is doing is that we've expanded the number of households who are currently on poverty assistance and that has been led by the Ministry of Equity. So as we speak, we have a total of 2,600 give and take on the poverty assistance where government gives a direct cash transfer to households and the transfer sizes vary on the household size. If you are single household, you get in the range of $215 monthly. If you are a five household or more, you would get, I think, $500 or more. But one of the unique things about the social protection system is that there is an under coverage of poor households. So as we speak, our individual level, which is where persons are considered food poor, is about 1.8% of our population, which is just about 3,600 households. Given that more households may fall below the poverty line as a result of COVID-19, priority attention will be given to households that are currently on the waiting list as well as individuals who were unemployed pre-COVID-19 and are now in desperate need of public assistance. Founding President of the Seven Business Associations Sabina Valmore noted that apart from the income support being provided by the government of St. Lucia, members of the business community have also been assisting the more vulnerable individuals during this period. We see a lot of generosity coming out of the private sector, not only to support their employees, but to provide support for generally people who they think would not otherwise qualify. Some people who are falling between the cracks would otherwise qualify for any kind of support, because within the communities there is this intimacy where everybody knows everybody. And so because of that level of engagement, private sector always welcomes the opportunity to give back. The government of St. Lucia has already commenced rolling out several of the initiatives under the Economic Recovery and Resilience Plan. From the Government Information Service, I am Anisia Antoine reporting. In keeping with changes in international oil prices and government's application of the modified market pass through petroleum pricing mechanism, the retail price of gasoline, diesel, LPG 20, 22 and 100 pound cylinders has changed. The retail price of kerosene remains unchanged. The price changes take effect from Monday July 2020. Gasoline increased from $11.50 to $11.95 per gallon. Kerosene remains unchanged at $7.15 per gallon. Diesel increased from $10.44 to $10.68 per gallon. The 20 pound cylinder increased from $27.01 to $27.35 per cylinder. The 22 pound cylinder increased from $29.71 to $30.09 per cylinder. The 100 pound cylinder increased from $155.93 to $159.37 per cylinder. The public is informed that the next adjustment of the retail price of fuel products will be Monday, August 10, 2020. With the Caribbean Primary Exit Assessment CPEA soon to be implemented, the Ministry of Education, Innovation, Gender Relations and Sustainable Development is seeking to change the public's perception as it relates to schools on the island. Ministry of Education's Deputy Chief Education Officer with Responsibility for Instruction Dawson Raghunanan indicated that all schools are equipped with the necessaries to ensure student success. He encouraged students to give up their best, regardless of what school they are assigned to. However, what I want to do here today is I want to ensure that people understand that all of our schools have teachers who are well trained, who are well qualified in every one of our schools. We do not say, okay, we're going to send particular teachers to particular schools. The way it is done is it is done so that there is equity across the board in terms of the qualifications of those teachers and in terms of commitment and so on. And so we see that throughout all of our schools. And so what I want to do, I want to commend the students who have made it to all schools in St. Lucia. Regardless of what school you have been assigned to, I want you to know that it is not the school that defines you, but it is all about you being able to go there and to be committed, to be totally dedicated, and again to follow the program because it's all about discipline. So if you can do those things, you will be successful despite. The Deputy Chief Education Officer explained that all schools on the island continue to contribute to the development of St. Lucia. He added that the COVID-19 pandemic has made even more apparent that everyone, regardless of job or education, has a role to play in society. You know, it is interesting to note that we have many of our persons who are doing very well in society. But if you were to go back and to look at the roots of those persons and to track where they came from, you would see that all of our schools have contributed to the tremendous success that we have, especially in all fields, whether it be the medical field, whether it be the field of engineering, whether it be the field in terms of persons going out there. So it really doesn't matter. We have all schools contributing because at the end of the day, every occupation is important. We depend on each other. We all cannot do it. With the common entrance examinations in the review mirror and students throughout the island soon to begin a new chapter in their education journey, the Ministry of Education is encouraging all students to give off their best and surely success will follow. This is NTIA Nightly. Up next, more of the latest developments. In an effort to ensure patient and first responder safety, the St. Lucia Fire Service has reviewed its patient transfer procedures, especially for patients with respiratory distress. Face masks will be provided. At no time during transportation should the face mask be removed. Please be patient and cooperative during this time to ensure you receive the best possible care while keeping our first responders safe. Welcome back. The Ministry of Agriculture is collaborating with Taiwan Technical Mission on enhancement of the efficiency of production, distribution supply chains in the fruits and vegetables sector project. The project seeks to reduce St. Lucia's food import bill. The Ministry of Agriculture, in collaboration with the Taiwan Technical Mission, embarked on the enhancement of the efficiency of production, distribution supply chains in the fruits and vegetables sector project, which seeks to reduce St. Lucia's food import bill. The cooperative project is aimed at decreasing the country's import bill over a three-year period through the increased production of seven crops, which include cantaloupe, honeydew, lettuce, tomatoes, watermelon, cabbages and bell peppers. Although the food import bill increased in 2019, five of the seven crops saw a decrease of 4.75% in imports. Chief Extension Officer in the Ministry of Agriculture, Kemuel Shabbatist, elaborated on the technical support given to farmers currently undergoing the project. We also have been engaging the farmers in terms of seeing what the schedules look like, at what times of year we were able to get information as to what times of year they traditionally grown. Now, during the process, you come across farmers who have these historical ways of doing things at a particular time of year, but the crops that we are talking about are not seasonal. These crops can be grown year-round under the right conditions. We also took a look at those people who have greenhouses. They protected agriculture and we were able to come up with a skeleton schedule as to how many greenhouses. Now, we did a survey, I think, in the early 2000s and we had somewhere in the range of about 300 of the structures on island and we were able to engage some of the people and see what the conditions were in terms of scheduling production in those greenhouses at the appropriate time. Chief Agri-Enterprise Development Officer in the Ministry of Agriculture Thaddeus Constantine explained that a parkhouse is being put in place at the marketing board to ensure safety within the food chain. One of the ways we have looked at this Seven Crops project is it's a chance for us to ensure we have greater food safety and to use the lessons learned later on in the other crops that we are going to look at. So that was a key component. Firstly, understanding the market, the landscape, we had our teams going out doing surveys, interviews, we compiled that information and from there we saw a number of challenges within the market. For example, the hotels had challenges with lettuce. Lettuce is a very perishable crop and out of there we were able now to rethink our work programs within the Ministry of Agriculture and look at the new challenges that some of them we were aware of, some we were not and also do the same for the marketing end to ensure that the end product is at the standard of the internationally imported product. Project coordinator of the Seven Crops program, Adli Nudovic, explained that an app entitled ifarm.govt.lc is currently in the pipeline to assist with the marketing. The app will allow farmers access to advertise their crops ahead of their harvest date and allow Ministry officials to monitor the output. We could run reports on what's happening. If we want to see what's happening in Watermelon we could run a report on that to see when it's going to come out, what's going to happen to Watermelon and we could run projections as to what will happen in this sector. Like anything else we do and we do know that we have unforeseen like weather systems pre-elastic, what have you, but then if everything works properly this system is going to revolutionize how we do business in agriculture. The ifarm app is expected to be rolled out in August 2020. From the Government Information Service, I am Anisia Antoine reporting. And that brings us to the end of Antia Nightly. Join us next time at 7 p.m. with a repeat at 7 a.m. You can also catch up with us anytime on the St. Lucia Government Facebook page or YouTube channel. I am General Norvel.