 and welcome to our live broadcast of the sitting of the Senate. Today is Thursday, July 14, 2022. I am your host or your anchor for today Jack Hingson Compton. We should be commencing in a few minutes where the proceedings will begin by the president of the Senate, the Honourable Claudius Francis, walking through the chambers. As I said, we have a few minutes before we can start. Unlike Tuesday where we saw a sitting of the House of Assembly, today might be a little shorter as we have a shorter agenda. Today we really only have about five motions directed at borrowing funds from international donor agencies and foreign governments for a national development agenda. We also have one bill on table for discussion and debate and presentation and from the agenda that I have seen, we should start off with prayers and announcements by the president of the Senate, appointments of session committees and to wrap it up we would have papers to be laid. As I mentioned, we have five motions and one bill to be presented. The one bill is just a first reading so the proceedings for the entire day should go by fairly quickly. I believe what may take some time or what where the debate may be extensive is on the five motions. Now if I could just read some of the motions which I have right here in front of me. I also forgot to mention we will have a few statutory instruments which will be read during today's proceedings. So the first motion scheduled to be debated for today. If I could just read it out by the Honourable Parliamentary Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism, Investments, Creative Industries, Culture and Information and Leader of Government Business. Number one, I do apologise that that first motion will actually be read by the Leader of Government Business. I apologise for that, not the Honourable Parliamentary Secretary. The first motion be resolved that Parliament authorises the Minister for Finance to borrow the amount of US $10 million from the Export-Import-A-Back Bank of the Republic of China to finance the implementation of national development projects and initiatives. It's further resolved that A, the loan is repayable in 30 consecutive equal or as nearly equal as possible semi-annual installments. The first of which must be made on the last day of the 66-month from the date. The first advance under the loan is made by the Export-Import Bank of the Republic of China and thereafter on the last day of each successive six-month period. B, in the full amount of the loan has been drawn down, each principal instalment must be in the amount of US $333,334 except that last principal instalment must be in the amount of $333,314 US, otherwise the amount of each instalment shall be adjusted by the Export-Import Bank of the Republic of China on Taiwan. Interest is payable at a rate of the six-month secured overnight financing rate plus 0.20% plus 1.5% per annum. D, the loan is repayable in 20 years commencing from the date of first displacement of the loan inclusive of a grace period of five years. And that as I mentioned is going to be the first motion that will be presented and debated for today. That is a loan from the Export-Import Bank from the Republic of China on Taiwan. That motion was actually presented by the Prime Minister on Tuesday, July 12th. That was a loan of US $10 million and those funds are going to be used to finance the implementation of various national development projects and initiatives. Several of those initiatives, as was discussed on Tuesday, were initiatives that were presented by the Prime Minister earlier this year, in April of this year, during the Prime Minister's budget address. So if you need to go back and re-watch the Prime Minister's budget address, you can check out our social media platforms, the Government of St Lucia's YouTube channel and the Government of St Lucia's Facebook page. You can also catch us live anytime there's a sitting of the House of Assembly and the sitting of the Senate on the National Television Network. As I mentioned, several of the initiatives that will be funded by this loan from the Export-Import Bank from the Republic of China on Taiwan include an expansion of the craft and CMOS industry, which is quite an emerging industry that should provide a lot of employment to our youth, hopefully in the future. It falls in line with the Prime Minister's promises to inject funds into the youth economy, hopefully looking towards a very prosperous future. He mentioned during his presentation, I'll be the Prime Minister, that the equivalent of 7.2 million Eastern Caribbean dollars from the total loan amount will be injected into the youth economy program. Four million Eastern Caribbean dollars will be used for the Millennium Highway West Coast Road project, a very timely project that should be coming on board very soon. And over 3 million Eastern Caribbean dollars out of that total of US 10 million dollars will fund the improvement of street lights in the country. What's going to be happening is that we will be replacing those bulbs with energy conserving bulbs, that's with the street lights across the country. As mentioned earlier, when I read through the order paper for that motion, the loan is repayable in 20 years and is inclusive of a grace period of five years. Now if I could only read through the other motions that are on the table for today, on the agenda for today, be it resolved, this is number two, the second motion, be it resolved that Parliament authorizes the Minister for Finance to borrow from the European Investment Bank the sum of 13 million 500,000 euros to finance emergency operating expenses in the health sector related to the COVID-19 virus pandemic. Obviously for the past two years we have the entire world has thoroughly suffered with through the advent of the coronavirus or the COVID-19 pandemic. In this motion, be it resolved, be it further resolved that A, the loan is repayable over a period of 20 years from the date of first displacement of the loan inclusive of a four-year grace period, B, the loan payments shall be made in consecutive equal semi-annual installments, C, the loan payments shall commence after the grace period of four years expires, D, the interest is payable at one at a fixed rate of 1.35% to 1.45% to be termed by the European Investment Bank at the time of displacement for each tranche, 2. At a floating rate of three months, Euro Interbank offered rate plus 110 basis points to 120 basis points per annum, a lot of technical jargon in there, but I'm sure a lot of you finance aficionados and bankers would understand a lot of the technical jargon being discussed in the motion. Number three, the third motion, be it resolved that parliament authorizes the minister for finance of finance to borrow an amount of US $8 million from the International Development Association to finance the organization of eastern Caribbean states data for decision making project, be it further resolved that A, the service charge is the greater of one, the sum of three-fourths of 1% per annum plus the basis adjustment to the service charge, and two, three-fourths of 1% per annum on the withdrawn credit balance and B, the maximum commitment charge is one-half of 1% per annum on the withdrawing of the withdrawn financing balance, and C, the loan is repayable in 40 years, commencing from the dates of displacement of the loan inclusive of a grace period of 10 years, and D, the principal amount of the loan is repayable on each 15th day of March and 15th day of September, each year commiserate with the following terms. Under D, we have one 1% of the loan amounts commencing on the 15th day of September, 2032, and including the 15th day of March, 2042, and under two 2% of the loan amounts commencing on the 15th day of September, 2042, and including the 15th day of March, 2062. The fourth motion to be debated for today, be it resolved that parliament authorizes the minister for finance to borrow an amount of USD $18 million from the International Development Association for the Implementation of the Unleashing of the Blue Economy of the Caribbean Project. Be it further resolved that A, the service charge is the greater of 1, the sum of three-fourths of 1% per annum, plus the basis adjustment to the service charge, and two, three-fourths of 1% per annum on the withdrawn credit balance, B, the maximum commitment charge is one-half of 1% per annum on the un withdrawn financing balance, C, the loan is repayable in 40 years, commencing from the date of displacement of the loan inclusive of a grace period of 10 years, D, the principal amount of the loan is repayable on each 15th day of May and 15th day of November each year commiserate with the following terms. So these are the following terms. The first one is 1% of the loan amount commencing on the 15th day of May of 2032 and including the 15th day of November 2041. The second term, 2% of the loan amount commencing on the 15th day of May 2042 and including the 15th day of November 2061. The fifth and final motion to be presented and debated for today be it resolved that parliament authorizes the minister of finance to write off the debt in the sum of EC 546,264 dollars owed to the government by the Forse Jacques Credit Cooperative Society Limited with respect to the Mocha Housing Development Project. So that was the five motions. We should see a very, very heated and intelligent debate coming up in today's sitting of the House of Senate. And as I also mentioned, we have one final bill at the end and that bill will be presented by the honorable parliamentary secretary in the Ministry of Tourism, Investment, Creative Industries, Culture, and Information and Leader of Government Business. And that bill is called the International Banks Amendment and we should have a first only the first reading of this bill. So hopefully it will not be a long program today. But you never know when these debates get on you get a quite a heated and intellectual debate from your senators and your upper house of parliament. So we are still waiting for the president of the Senate to enter the chambers, but please stay tuned to the national television network for our live broadcast of the sitting of the Senate. And we are streaming live on our social media platforms, which are our Government of St. Lucia YouTube channel and our Government of St. Lucia Facebook page. Thank you. I am Jacques Kingston Compton. Please stay tuned. We'll be for the proceedings. This is the live broadcast of the sitting of the Senate. Today is July 14, Thursday, 2022. We hope that you have been enjoying our broadcast so far, but we're going to take a short break and resume as soon as the president of the Senate walks in. And before that, our sergeant and arms should give us a signal as to when the proceedings are going to begin. But we want you to please stay tuned to the national television network and view us live streaming on our social media platforms. And we should be back very momentarily in a few minutes with your live broadcast of the sitting of the Senate. Please stay tuned, be very patient, and we should be back very shortly.