 Propelling business development through technology is a theme for the 14th annual Saint Lucia Taiwan Partnership Trade Show scheduled for November 26-27, 2021. Minister for Commerce, Manufacturing, Business Development, Corporatives and Consumer Affairs Hon. Emma Hippolit, alongside her team from the Commerce Ministry, met with Taiwanese Ambassador His Excellency Peter Shen and his delegation to advance planning efforts for this year's trade show. The trade show aims to heighten awareness of ICT business solutions, while showcasing unique products and services from Taiwanese and Saint Lucia micro, small and medium enterprises to a local and international audience. To increase trade and business is a very important job for my embassy and also to enhance the relationship between Taiwan and Sanusia. And as you know, Taiwan is a trade country. We export a lot of our products. So that's also one of our mandate to export to help our company to export their products. But also, we try to increase the awareness of Taiwanese about what good products in Sanusia and to enhance mutual interaction or exchange between the business between two countries. Hon. Hippolit noted that the Ministry of Commerce will assist all Saint Lucia businesses to improve the standard and quality of their products and services to be export ready and to build their competitiveness. We must get businesses going. It is when a business matures and makes profit, we need to employ people and long and short of it is every Saint Lucia wants a decent job that it can get an income and that it can feed their families. That is a summary of what all of us want and we can only do this when we have a Ministry of Commerce supporting the business community, talking to them, removing and helping them remove the challenges that they have and helping them get into new markets. Marketing specialists with the Ministry of Commerce, Cindy Eugene, said due to COVID-19, this year's trade show will rely heavily on the use of ICT as the platform to propel business development and to increase awareness of Saint Lucia products and services. The trade show here is part of the Love Sanusia campaign because the Love Sanusia campaign is an emphasis to encourage persons to be familiar with what Saint Lucia produces, encourage the use of Saint Lucia goods, encourages the trade of Saint Lucia goods and services. And here we look at goods and services from Taiwan and the partnership here is to get some support from Taiwan, be it that we can trade, be it that we can see some great distribution of goods from Taiwan within the Caribbean, and we can also seek to get some manufacturing tools, some machinery to improve our processes here in Saint Lucia to have more efficient products similar to what we see coming out of Taiwan. Ambassador Chen believes that the focused ICT and virtual platforms at the trade show will attract greater interest in Taiwan on other international jurisdictions. I think there's a lot of products and a lot of good resources in Saint Lucia and I really encourage more people to come to Saint Lucia or more people to do business or invest in Saint Lucia. A memorandum of understanding will also be signed at the trade show between the Taiwan External Trade Development Council and the Saint Lucia Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture. We are hoping that by signing the MOU, members of the two bodies would have an opportunity to start doing business to business arrangements with the counterparts in Taiwan. The 14th annual Saint Lucia Taiwan Partnership Trade Show will feature 14 Taiwanese companies, 12 solution businesses, the American Chamber of Commerce in Barbados, and the DigiGolf project from Saint Lucia. For the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council, Glenn Simon reporting.