The Government of Saint Lucia is strengthening its approach to long-term national development by equipping public officers with the skills needed to design, implement and evaluate policies grounded in evidence and aligned with national priorities.
Public officers from ministries and government agencies recently participated in a week-long Strategic Policy Planning Workshop, facilitated by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in collaboration with the Department of Economic Development.
The initiative comes as Saint Lucia prepares to develop a new National Development Plan and Medium-Term Development Strategy covering the period from 2026 to 2040.
Deputy Chief Economist Kerry Joseph-Matthew said the workshop recognized that strategic planning must become a core responsibility across the entire public service.
“We could appreciate that strategic planning is a function of all agencies and so we are building the technical capacity across agencies to ensure that we are able to develop our national plan,” she said.
Joseph-Matthew explained that the timing of the training is especially significant as the country begins work on its next long-term development framework.
“This also gives us a good opportunity because now Saint Lucia would be moving into developing their national plan and the medium-term strategy going forward from 2026 to 2040,” she said.
“And so part of that process would be able to assist us in developing that plan.”
Coordinator of Statistics and Social Development at ECLAC, Abdullahi Abdulkadri, said effective policymaking depends on governments making decisions supported by reliable evidence rather than reacting to immediate challenges.
“Why that is important is we need to implement what we call evidence-based processes,” he said.
He stressed that policymakers must also ensure continuity between past, present and future initiatives.
“In addition we also need to make sure that there is a coherence, what we call policy coherence, such that something we did five years ago need to inform what we are doing currently, or what we anticipate will happen five years from now, we need to start planning for it,” Abdulkadri explained.
He added that national priorities must be reflected consistently throughout every level of government.
“What is being done at a national level, also we need to align with that at a departmental level, such that if we are doing something in a particular department, we should be able to relate it to what is being done by Cabinet,” he said.
The workshop forms part of the government’s broader efforts to improve policy formulation, strengthen institutional capacity and ensure that future development strategies are coordinated across the public sector as Saint Lucia charts its course towards 2040.