 As the government of St. Lucia moves to gain more involvement in the National Fair Trade Organization NFTO, Agriculture Minister Hon. Zika Al-Chosef convened a meeting with all nominees who are expected to fill in the executive positions on the organization's Board of Directors. The meeting, which took place on Thursday, May 27, 2021, demonstrates the government's commitment to initiating the Strategic New Direction, which it says will benefit the NFTO and its member farmers, as the previous operating procedures proved ineffective. According to Minister Zika Al-Chosef, the government is continuing to collaborate with the NFTO Board to put the legal framework in place to begin restructuring the banana industry. The recent bailout in the amount of $4.5 million was made possible through a loan facility acquired through the Ministry of Finance to pay off banana farmers. We took a decision with the support of the Cabinet and the Minister of Finance to pay some advance payment to the banana farmers. Now it has moved from 15 weeks, well it has moved from week 14 to week 20, because when they wrote us sometime in April, they owned banana farmers from week 7 to week 14. Today we learned that it has moved from 15 to week 20, so there's still a lot of money outstanding for the banana farmers, which of course we are factoring in the loan that we are getting from the Central Development Bank with the support of the Ministry of Finance. Minister Zika Al-Chosef notes that the immediate goals of the NFTO, as well as the government of St Lucia, are to ensure that farmers are paid on time and that they produce high quality commodities. It is going to be even more discouraging if the Board cannot increase its market share, both on the UK market and the original market. So if the Board cannot do that and what I'm learning today is that there is an interest and there have been requests by the small market through the through fives that they want more fruits. So it's for us now not only to sell more fruits, but to sell more quality fruits. That's important because we cannot continue to export fruits and when it reaches there almost 50% of the fruit is being dumped. And instead of the importers of our fruit owing the NFTO, we cannot continue that. Minister Joseph reaffirms the St Lucia Government's commitment to assisting the island banana farmers, constituent who are pivotal to the success of the island's agriculture economy. From the communications unit of the Ministry of Agriculture, I am Anisia Antoine-Report.