sons owing water bills or who have been engaging in illegal water connections. For one year, effective June 1st 2012 to May 31st 2013, three categories of persons will benefit from the amnesty: customers with illegal water connections and also existing WASCO accounts, persons with illegal water connections but no accounts with WASCO and customers being charged for water that they infrequently receive.
Valley and River Doree areas will also be considered soon. Complementing this is a sum of $3.27 million for the acquisition of lands owned by the former St. Lucia Banana Corporation (SLBC) in the Mabouya Valley.
REWARDING ENERGY EFFICIENY
$13 M FOR ICT EDUCATION PROJECTS Government expects increased momentum in the implementation of the ICT Programme in the island’s schools during the current financial year. This programme primarily seeks to improve the learning and teaching process in rural schools and provide the necessary skills to increase competitiveness in the job market through the employment of Information and Communication Technology. ICT offers tremendous possibilities to enhance students’ learning, develop teachers’ professional capability and strengthen institutional capacity, and government’s allocation to this initiative will be implemented through grant funding provided by the EU in the amount of $12.3 million.
YOUTH AGRICULTURAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP PROGRAMME The Youth Agricultural Entrepreneurship Programme, a project pioneered by the former administration, will receive support of $1.15 million, to be sourced from the CARICOM Development Fund and the Government of Saint Lucia. The main purpose of this project is to establish an entrepreneurship incubator programme geared at involving at least 150 young entrepreneurs in agriculture. The project aims to ensure the effective and efficient use of a number of parcels of land totaling about 685 acres, owned by Government, which currently are under utilized. The Ministry of Agriculture has identified lands in the Anse Ger, Beauséjour (Vieux Fort), Balenbouche and Roseau areas. The Mabouya
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REDUCED TAXES ON HYBRID VEHICLES
Government says it is committed to increasing energy efficiency in the work place. But while steps have been taken to phase out incandescent light bulbs and replace them with the more efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs, there is still significant room for improvement in the use of energy in the commercial sector. Government advocates that more efficient cooling systems, motion activated lighting, and better use of ambient lighting are all simple measures that can be taken to reduce national energy consumption. This will become even more important if the price of oil, on which the island still relies for electricity generation, starts to increase again on the world market. As a first step towards increasing energy efficiency, the government will provide a tax concession for one year, effective September 2012, to any business house that undertakes a comprehensive energy audit of its operations, with a view toward improving the energy efficiency of its operations. The Saint Lucia Bureau of Standards will also be mandated to develop standards for energy efficiency for major electrical appliances and to encourage the importers of appliances to display energy efficiency labels on them.
The transport sector is overtaking the electricity sector as the main user of fossil for energy in St. Lucia, thus making it important for the government’s efforts at increasing energy efficiency to also focus on that sector. Government says it will reduce the duties and taxes on hybrid vehicles that do not depend solely on gasoline or diesel to run. It will therefore reintroduce incentives it offered six years ago and introduce a flat Excise Tax Rate of 10% for a period of eighteen months, on all hybrid vehicles imported into St. Lucia.
INCREASING INTERNET ACCESS
This year, an ambitious three-year programme will commence to provide free wireless Internet access to all communities on the island. The programme will be executed in phases. The first will involve using existing human resource develop-