 The cross-partnership between Taiwan and Senutia has continued to grow stronger with increasingly diversified and timely bilateral cooperation projects. Under the leadership of Honorable Prime Minister Philly JPA, with the support and collaboration from the Cabinet Ministers and their teams in the ministries, all of those projects are based on the People-Centered Principle, and which is the fundamental factor of democracy. Today I take pleasure to demonstrate this staunch friendship and great partnership again for delivering on behalf of the Taiwan Government funding for nine projects in response to the request from the Government of Senutia, which includes VG Sports Complex, Boys to Men Mushrooms, Enhancing Honey and Seamos, Fishery Facilities Upgrade Improvement, Repairs and Maintenance to the Castries, Dennery and View for Fishing Facilities, Kokoya Sector Enhancement, Repairs to Facilities Corrections, Central Procurement of Office furniture and extra fire service, Sustainable School Garden, Library Market and Square Reconstruction. Christmas is coming, and it's time to show appreciation, so I would like to take this opportunity to express our heartfelt gratitude to the people and government of Senutia for the ongoing strong support to Taiwan's international participation, and special thanks to Honourable Prime Minister Free JPA, Honourable Minister of Abaptists, Honourable Minister Moses John Baptiste and Honourable Minister Sean Edward, for voicing out for Taiwan's campaign in the United Nations, WHO, IKO, Interpol and UNFCCC. Looking ahead, we will continue to collaborate with the Senutian Government for the mutual benefit of our two countries, with a more comprehensive partnership contributing to a sustainable quality of life for our people. Thank you. And I wish everyone and all the people in Senutia Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Deputy Prime Minister, Members of the Cabinet, Members of the Civil Service, Permanent Secretary, Accountant General, Cabinet Secretary, Ambassador and his delegation from the Taiwanese Embassy. Good morning. As I've said before, a Minister of Finance sometimes smiles when he gets grants. And this morning, the Minister of Finance will be smiling because he's getting grants. I want to thank the Government of Taiwan for agreeing to fund the projects that the Ambassador mentioned. And I'm going to go into just a little detail on these projects because you will notice that they are keeping with the government's mantra of putting people first. Most of these projects relate directly to people, either young people or farmers or people of that nature. It's direct. The first project we get $150,000 for is a VG Sports Complex renovation. And these are facilities used by the young people of castries, mainly but from other areas. And also it's a venue where we have many international fixtures. And then the repairs to that complex is just the beginning. But we hope that we can continuously improve it. So we're very happy that we get $150,000 to fund that project. Then there's a Boys to Men Mushrooms project where we get $100,000 to do that. And we speak about a lot of interventions and everyone now particularly in the situation that we have relating to the security of the country, everyone has some advice. And it's a government's position, the position of the entire cabinet that we'll take any advice that we can get to help us solve the problems that we have. But we believe in action and we believe in putting some level of sustainability to these actions. And that $100,000 is going to be used for a program, it's called Boys to Men Projects, which will basically aim at young men to see that we can help them in the production of mushrooms, both to employ themselves and to create it for use and for export. In the new health crisis, the new health crisis is mushrooms is a very important project. And then we're going to get $100,000 for that. And then there's a non-agriculture project and the Minister of Agriculture has his red tie. There's a non-agriculture project which is a honey and seamos project. Again I always speak about seamos and my colleagues laugh. So there's an emphasis now, $300,000 on a honey and seamos project. To get seamos and honey, particularly the seamos in that case, to get it to a level where we can export it and deal with the problems we have from competition. Because there's good competition both with honey and seamos. And talking about honey and seamos, I have to mention export St. Lucia, who have been doing quite a bit of work as far as the exportation of honey and seamos. So we have $300,000 towards the honey and seamos projects. Then there's an upgrade in agriculture again. The Minister of Agriculture can't see that he's not been observed and the importance of agriculture to the economy of St. Lucia has not been emphasized. Agriculture, the upgrade to the facilities, $1.1 million. And that is January, viewfort and castries. We have serious issues with castries and I hope that that money can be used to complement what we intend to do in castries because the fishermen, the fisher people, the fisher folk are complaining about the lack of facilities in castries. So I know the Cabinet has formed a committee to look into the situation in the fisheries complex in castries. So we're working together. You have some money to deal with. And of course, January and viewfort fishing facilities, which I'm sure you will use to get some level of repairs. Then there's agriculture again. Cocoa sector enhancement, $1.4 million, again a new export crop. A new crop we know we will use all of cocoa in our chocolates. The chocolates are produced in St. Lucia, that chocolate, which is again a health situation which is always called a powerful chocolate. So Cocoa enhancement, new exports, diversification, real diversification of agriculture. So when you speak about agriculture and diversification, we are putting our policies in place and the money will come towards these policies, again extremely important. Then back, so we're going to get $1.4 million for the Cocoa enhancement project. Then there is the repairs to the facilities. And then the Ministry of Home Affairs have been calling quite rightly, so for improvements to the bodily institution. And we have some $785,000 to begin, which I'm sure the Ministry will use wisely at the bodily institution. And I know they need much more, but that's a start. So we can start doing some much needed work up there. Then there's a procurement of furniture and some of it for the fire service, $200,000. Then there is the sustainable school garden project, again agriculture. And it's a project that I asked for because I saw what's happening in my school, in the school, in my constituency, the Martian school. I saw the young people, and I don't want to go into the Martian again, let's do that alone. I saw people, the students, very interested in agriculture. So I thought we could get them just, and the $3,000 is not a lot of money, but give them an incentive so the schools can get an incentive to go into school gardening. I'm creating an incentive for them, and the $50,000 will do that. Then there is a library market square reconstruction, where the library market square is the largest amount, apart from the Cocoa Sect enhancement, that we're using $1 million to commence work on the library market square. It's again, it's a project that's been around for a long time, the people of library need it. So now we're going to have the initial injection of $1 million on the library market square. That totals $5.1 million. All these projects I see are people-centered projects, and they were part of our budget, when I made the budget presentation, we spoke about these projects using the Taiwanese grant funds, on the line of the word grant funds. But what's important is implementation. We cannot have all these projects on the books, and the implementation is not happening. So we will not hear a refrain of, there is no money. The money is there, the check is going to be handed over to the day, so the money is available, but we need to get to the implementation of these projects. And we need the public service to begin the implementation. So there cannot be any excuse that budget is over, that money is going to flow into next budget. So we can work continuously towards this project. So the refrain that we have to wait for the budget money to kick in can't be used, because that money will kick in before the budget. And we are preparing now in the budget another list of projects for the Taiwanese grant section, which will happen again. So we're preparing another list of projects, which will fund the Taiwanese grant project. So I'm very pleased, I'm looking forward to the implementation of these projects. These projects are people-centered, they are for the people of the country, and I'm glad that the Taiwanese government has agreed to them. And as I said, we're going to have another set of grant funded projects for the next budget cycle. Another thing is most of these projects I said are agriculture and people-centered. I want to thank the government of Taiwan. We visited Taiwan, the Ministry of Education and myself and the delegation. We visited Taiwan last month, I want to thank them. We had a very, very fruitful visit. The fruits of that visit are going to be known very shortly. But we need to say thank you. We need to wish you and convict your President the gratitude of the government of Saint Lucia. And tell them that what we want in Saint Lucia is sustainability. We want to work together. We want to work together. Taiwan is a large country, a small country, but I'm sure by working together, by learning from each other, both countries can benefit. So thank you, Ambassador. I do wish you a season's greetings. You are the family.