Ten-year National Development Plan for Turks & Caicos
Tuesday, October 4, 2005
PROVIDENCIALES, Turks & Caicos Islands: The preparation of a 10-Year National Development Plan for the Turks and Caicos Islands to be implemented in rolling three year stages and Development Plans for particular Islands will kick into high gear in early October 2005 with the arrival of Kairi Consultants – an internationally renowned group of economic planners, sociologists, and engineers led by Dr. Ralph Henry – former Head of the Department of Economics at the University of the West Indies.
Over the past year the Department of Planning working closely with the Department of Economic Planning and Statistics has been busy setting up the framework for this planning exercise.
While the Kairi Consultants will be providing intellectual leadership and coordination and doing the bulk of the writing of the Plans, it is the ideas, expectations and aspirations of the Turks and Caicos Island people that will form the substantive content of the Plans.
To ensure that the peoples’ ideas are incorporated in the Plan, in June this year Executive Council approved the establishment of a Steering Committee comprised of 18 experienced and accomplished citizens who will act like a Board of Directors providing broad vision and guidance to the Consultants.
In addition to the Steering Committee, several sectoral sub-committees are being established consisting of informed and knowledgeable representatives from the various economic and social sectors who will be suggesting specific policies, programmes and projects in areas such as taxation and revenue policies; investment and incentives; tourism; agriculture and fisheries; education and human resource development; labour relations; entertainment, gaming and craft; local governance; transport and communications; culture, values and attitudes and national identity.
Two major workshops involving the members of the Steering Committee and Island and Sectoral
sub-committees are planned. The first workshop will take place before the
actual writing of the plan begins – so that the peoples’ views can be
incorporated within the plan; and another after the first draft has been
prepared to review the contents of the Plans before they are finalized and
presented to Executive Council.
In addition, there will be radio and
television call-in programmes to allow as many persons as possible to call-in
or write-in their ideas. Existing reports and plans such as the Blue Ribbon
Commission Report on Immigration and the newly prepared Tourism Strategic Plan
will be absorbed into the 10 year National Development Plan. In between the
first and second workshops, a major task of the consultants will be
coordinating the programme and project ideas of the people and phasing and
scheduling them in line with available resources.
The Turks and Caicos Islands have made
tremendous progress over the past twenty years, but serious imbalances persist
between the various islands and social groups. By better coordinating and
prioritizing resources and activities in both the public and private sectors,
planning will enable the government to address these imbalances.
It is envisaged that the preparation of the
first phase of the plan will take about 9 months. It will culminate with a
major Development/Investment Conference.
The planning exercise will be officially launched on Oct. 27, 2005 at the Beaches Resort, Providenciales by Chief Minister Michael Misick.
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