 Money laundering is a serious and growing issue globally. The United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime estimates that between 2 and 5% of global GDP is laundered. This amounts to $800 million to $2 trillion annually. Juliana Alfred, Permanent Secretary in the Attorney General's chambers and chair of the National Anti-Money Laundering Oversight Committee, NAMLOK, explained that NAMLOK, which is an intersectoral committee set up by the Cabinet of Ministers, is actively working to monitor and mitigate the risks posed to the various sectors within St. Lucia by money laundering, terrorists and proliferation financing. So, all of this work that the committee is doing, it's with the intention that towards the end of this year, St. Lucia will be applying for re-rating to remove us from enhanced follow-up, because currently, we are under enhanced follow-up because of all of these deficiencies. Kozel Chris is the senior counsel in the AG's chambers and deputy chair of NAMLOK. She said St. Lucia has been cited as falling short on some of the 40 standards set by the Financial Action Task Force, which is the intergovernmental policy-making body established to set international standards to combat money laundering, terrorism and proliferation financing. St. Lucia would have been graded on each of these rules. So from our standpoint, we had partially compliant in at least 22 and non-compliant in eight. So some of the things I would identify is that in terms of our risk, one of the suggestions out of the mutual evaluation report is that St. Lucia must be able to sufficiently identify the MLTF, that's money laundering and terrorist financing risk, and they must be able to allocate the resources in terms of which are the higher risk errors and which are the lower risk errors. She added that St. Lucia's anti-money laundering legislation must also ensure that there is sufficient, dissuasive and proportionate sanctioning for persons who breach the Money Laundering Prevention Act. And specifically in relation to non-profit organizations, they consider that these organizations are of course higher risk, however St. Lucia has not addressed in terms of which subset of these NPOs would be higher risk for money laundering or terrorist financing. Though compliance with international standards is voluntary, the economic ramifications for deliberate non-compliance can be catastrophic, with countries facing being grey or blacklisted or even losing correspondent banking privileges. So what you will see happening is obviously disruption in services, you would see higher cost of services as a result of that. When we look at issues for example of remittances, which are a very big thing for the region, that can be affected as well. So these recommendations as small island development states, you essentially have no choice but to comply because the ramifications are quite intense. The National Anti-Money Laundering Oversight Committee has commenced the ramping up of its stakeholder engagement and public sensitization program in relation to the necessary amendments to various pieces of legislation that support the Anti-Money Laundering Prevention Act. A panel discussion held at the NTN Studios formed part of the public sensitization effort where issues such as customer due diligence, risk mitigation, compliance requirements and sources of funds were addressed by industry professionals. St Lucia will apply for a re-rating of its national risk assessment in November 2023. For the National Competitiveness and Productivity Council, Glenn Simon reporting.