The Government of Saint Lucia has begun an extensive stakeholder consultation process to guide the country’s Medium-Term Development Strategy for 2026 to 2030 and the formulation of a long-term National Development Plan through to 2040.
Officials say the process is designed to be deliberately people-centered, bringing together voices from civil society, the private sector, and communities across the island to help define the country’s development priorities.
Chief Economist in the Ministry of Economic Development, Charlin Louisy-Regis, emphasized the importance of strengthening monitoring and evaluation systems to ensure that government policies are guided by evidence and continuous learning.
“With monitoring and evaluation, we learn, and with learning we improve the action of government,” Louisy-Regis said.
She noted that collaboration with regional partners will play a critical role in strengthening these systems.
“We strengthen institutional capacities, we strengthen individual capacities through training, and we strengthen the enabling environment for monitoring and evaluation and evidence use across policies in the Saint Lucia government,” she explained.
Supporting the national effort is the Center for Learning on Evaluation and Results for Latin America and the Caribbean, known as CLEAR-LAC, which is working alongside the Caribbean Development Bank to reinforce Saint Lucia’s monitoring and evaluation framework.
Executive Director of CLEAR-LAC, Christian Crespo, said the new development strategy will take into account both past planning frameworks and emerging global realities.
“We have reference to the past documents, but really and truly we’re in a new dispensation,” Crespo stated.
“At the beginning of the session, we spoke about the global trends, things that are happening. There’s unrest, there’s climate change, there’s digital disruption, and AI. So those are a lot of new things that would not have been considered in the previous strategy.”
According to Crespo, the process will focus on preparing Saint Lucia to navigate global changes while identifying opportunities for growth and development.
“So, we really want to look forward. We want to consider not just Saint Lucia in isolation or in a vacuum. We want to consider what some of the global trends are, how Saint Lucia can prepare itself for it, how Saint Lucia can grab the opportunities that are out there, and what road we need to develop in order to get there,” he said.
Pivotal to the exercise is Lévé Global, a Trinidad and Tobago-based consultancy leading the situational and gap analysis for the new strategy.
Chief Operations Officer of Lévé Global, Kevon Wilson, said the consultation process marks a shift toward broader public engagement in national planning.
“This time around, we have pursued a more participatory approach, ensuring that the medium-term development strategy is people-centric,” Wilson explained.
He said the intention is to develop a plan that reflects the priorities and needs of the entire country rather than focusing solely on government agencies.
“We want to focus on not only line ministries, but also on the communities, the country; we want to have a plan that will be integrated and cater to the needs of the entire country,” Wilson said.
Officials say the consultations will continue across various sectors as the government works to craft a comprehensive development framework that will guide Saint Lucia’s economic and social transformation over the next fifteen years.