 Prime Minister the Honourable Philip J. Pierre has designated the 2024-2025 budget here the year for infrastructure, and the Ministry charged with that responsibility took the proactive stance. Between October 9 and 13, 2023, a series of stakeholder consultations were held at the conference room of the Department of Infrastructure, Ports and Transport, invited with the government sectors critical to the Department in the implementation of several types of infrastructure. Lenita Joseph, Permanent Secretary in the Department of Infrastructure, Ports and Transport, says the series of consultations was aimed at determining what the requests are for the Department's interventions from those various agencies for 2024-2025. The Permanent Secretary hastens to add, however, that it is contingent on the Department's proactiveness and timely response to those requests. What we have found over the past few years is that although we have a budget, but very often these other agencies have not been part of the budgeting process. So quite often in year, we get a number of requests that are not planned by the Department and we are pressured as a result to respond to these requests. Many a times these requests are not funded so we have to find the money to be able to accommodate the request and because of the timing of the request, it's also putting pressure on us to be able to respond. As a result, that impacts very negatively on the implementation rate of those other agencies as well as the Department because we have to leave some of our own planned works behind to attend to those requests. So this year we're trying to adopt a new approach so that we can be more clinical in determining what the budget allocation should be for the various sectors. The Permanent Secretary described the conversations held with the various agencies as instructive and valuable. Several areas requiring the Department's intervention for the 2024-2025 period were highlighted. So at the end of all of that process, we put everything together and we are now able to make a complete submission to the Budget Office to say these are the anticipated works. Priority areas, these are the things that we will need support for for the year 2024-25. So we're hoping that through this process we will actually be more responsive to the needs of the various sectors and as a result that will also read down to the benefit of the public who will find that those are the sectors that they have to interact with where infrastructural requirements or needs are concerned or interventions that these would have already been programmed for and therefore when the requests are made is just a matter of timing when we start to implement those projects. The DIPT's Permanent Secretary noted that this process will remain a staple in the Department's budgetary preparation process. We have also been very actively engaged in preparing a strategic plan which we have dubbed Infrastructure 2030 which will look at the infrastructure needs and even in that process we are redefining infrastructure. Most people see infrastructure as your brick-and-mortar type of infrastructure but we are looking at the utilities, telecommunications and of course your built environment as part of the entire infrastructure portfolio. We want to include Maritime also, there are a number of other initiatives that are going to take place. So we are trying to be very comprehensive in our review of the infrastructure sector and to be as I said before very responsive to what is taking place in the external environment. Among the participants in the week-long consultation were the Department of Health, Sports, Housing, Physical Development, Education and Tourism. Reporting for the Department of Infrastructure, Ports and Transport, I am Miguel Favre.