Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1698075823081.pdf (Saint Lucia)
Budget Analysis for Investments in Children in Saint Lucia BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENTS IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Published by UNICEF Office for the Eastern Caribbean Area First Floor, UN House Marine Gardens, Hastings Christ Church Barbados Tel: (246) 467 6000 Fax: (246) 426 3812 Email: bridgetown@unicef.org Website: www.unicef.org/easterncaribbean This Study was commissioned by the UNICEF Office for the Eastern Caribbean Area and UN Women Multi-Country Office - Caribbean The contents do not necessarily reflect the policies or views of the organizations.
Authors: Zina Nimeh, Arthur Van de Meerendonk, Franziska Gassmann, Jouke Wortelboer, Eli Stoykova and Daphne Francoise Nimeh, Z., Van de Meerendonk, A., Gassmann, F., Wortelboer, J. and Stoykova, E., Francoise, D. (2015).

Budget Analysis for Investments in Children in Saint Lucia, UNICEF Office for the Eastern Caribbean Area.

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2015 Budget Analysis for Investments in Children in Saint Lucia CONTENTS Acknowledgments Executive summary Introduction 1 1.1 Structure of the report 1.2 Government actors 1.3 Data and methodology 1.4 Limitations 1.5 Process 2 Economic and Social Context 2.1 Economic and fiscal environment 2.2 Fiscal operations and management and the social budget 2.3 Demographic trends 2.4 Labour market 2.5 Poverty and child well-being 2.6 Conclusion 3 Education 3.1 Short overview of the education system in Saint.
Lucia 3.2 Policies and planning 3.2.1 Laws and other basic regulations concerning education 3.2.2 Administration and management of the education system 3.3 Overview of programmes 3.3.1 Early childhood education (ECE) services 3.3.2 Primary school services 3.3.3 Secondary school services 3.4 The education budget 3.4.1 Education financing 3.4.2 Methodology and data 3.4.3 Budget analysis 3.4.4 Allocation per programme 3.4.5 Spending execution 3.5 Education benefit incidence analysis 3.6 Discussion 4 Social Protection Introduction 4.1 4.2 Policies and planning 4.2.1 The National Strategic Framework (NSPP) 4.3 Overview of the programmes 4.3.1 Cash transfer programmes 4.3.2 Programmes that combine cash transfers and non-cash transfers 4.3.3 Active labour market programmes 4.3.4 Education support programmes (non-cash transfers) ii x The social protection budget 4.4.1 Methodology and data 4.4.2 The budget of the Ministry of Social Transformation 4.4.3 Spending execution 4.4.4 The Saint Lucia Social Development Fund (SSDF) budget 4.4.5 Financial analysis of the social protection programmes 4.4.6 Key Performance Indicators 4.5 Assessment of social protection benefits 4.6 Discussion 5 Child Protection 5.1 Short overview of child protection issues in Saint Lucia 5.2 Overview of programmes 5.2.1 Child protection programmes – Ministry of Health 5.2.2 Child protection programmes – Ministry of Social Transformation, Local Government and Community Empowerment 5.2.3 Child protection programmes – Ministry of Home Affairs and National Security 5.2.4 The National Action Child Protection Committee 5.3 The child protection budget 5.4 Assessment of child protection initiatives 5.5 Discussion 6 Health Care 6.1 Overview of health conditions 6.2 Governance, policies and planning 6.3 Overview of programmes 6.3.1 Health services and professionals 6.3.2 Medicines 6.4 The health budget 6.4.1 Health care financing 6.4.2
 Methodology and data 6.4.3 Budget analysis 6.4.4 Medical and administrative costs 6.4.5 Allocation per programme 6.4.6 Spending execution 6.5 Assessment of health benefits 6.6 Discussion 7 Concluding Remarks and Future Outlook 7.1 Highlights from the report 7.2 General recommendations 7.3 Future outlook 8 References 9 Annex iii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2-1: GOSL Public Debt (left) and Debt/GDP (right), 2003–2013 Figure 2-2: Population pyramid in 2001 and 2010 Figure 2-3: Distribution of population per area (per cent) Figure 2-4: Distribution of individuals by wealth quintiles, different household size, as a percentage Figure 2-5: Figure 2-6: Figure 2-7: Distribution of individuals by wealth quintiles, different number of children in the household, as a percentage Distribution of individuals by wealth quintiles, households by different age of household head, as a percentage Distribution of individuals by wealth quintiles, households by gender of household head, as a percentage Figure 2-8: Distribution of children among wealth quintiles, as a percentage Figure 3-1: Enrolment rates primary education 2000-201 (as a percentage) Figure 3-2: Adjusted net primary enrolment rates in the Caribbean, 2010 (as a percentage) Figure 3-3: Gender Parity Index for the adjusted net primary enrolment rate, 2011 Figure 3-4: Primary completion rate, 2010 (as a percentage) Figure 3-5: Net enrolment rates secondary education in Saint Lucia, 2000-2012 Figure 3-6: Net enrolment rate secondary, all programmes, 2010 Figure 3-7: Public spending on education, 2010, (as a percentage of GDP) Figure 3-8: Allocation of expenditure for the Central Administration, 2013/14 Figure 3-9: Allocation of expenditure in Primary Education, 2013/14 Figure 3-10: Allocation of expenditure in Secondary Education, 2013/14 Figure 3-11: Education expenditures by level of
 education, 2012/13 Figure 3-13: Distribution of students by gender, for each level of education Figure 4-1: Overview of social protection programmes Figure 4-2: Allocation of expenditure for social transformation, 2009/10 and 2013/14 Figure 4-3: Allocation of expenditure for local government, 2013/14 Figure 4-4: SSDF income, 2009-2014 Figure 4-5: Income, programme and administration expenditures SSDF, 2010-2014 Figure 4-6: Coverage rates of PAP and average wealth scores by region, 2013 Figure 4-7: Distribution of PAP beneficiaries by regions, 2013 Figure 5-1: Social protection and child protection programmes in Saint Lucia.
Figure 5-2: Charged children by gender Figure 6-1: Birth, death and infant mortality ratios for Saint Lucia , 2001–2012 Figure 6-2: Fertility rates in the Caribbean, 2011 (in births per woman) Figure 6-3: Life expectancy at birth, Caribbean Region, 1980 and 2011 (in years) Figure 6-4: Condensed Budget MOH Economic Classification 2009-2014 Figure 6-5: Central Health Administration (recurrent only), 2007/08 and 2013/14 Figure 6-6: General Hospitals, 2013/14 Figure 6-7: Human Services, 2013/14 Figure 6-8: Total health expenditures (THE) in the Caribbean region, 2009-12 (average, as a percentage) Figure 6-9: Government health expenditures in the Caribbean region, 2012 (as a percentage) Figure 6-10: Government expenditure on health per capita at PPP (NCU per US$), 2012 Figure 6-11: Out-of-pocket expenditures in the ECCU (as a percentage), 2012 Figure 6-12: Out-of-pocket expenditure as a percentage of total health expenditure by poverty incidence, 2006 (percentage of people living on less than US$2 PPP per day) iv BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA LIST OF TABLES Table 1-1: Overview of activities and outputs Table 2-1: Selected economic and social indicators for Saint Lucia, 2008–2013 Table 2-2: The Budget Calendar of Saint Lucia Table 2-3: Population structure (as a percentage) Table 2-4: Dependency Ratios (per cent) of working age population Table 2-5: Key Labour Market statistics (as a percentage) Table 2-6: Unemployment rate by age group and sex, 2013 Table 2-7: Employed Population by Status of Employment and Sex (per cent), 2013 Table 2-8: Overall well-being rates, by age group, as a percentage of all children in the age group Table 3-1: Monitoring Indicators Early Childhood Education (MOE) 2008/09-2012/13 Table 3-2: Key performance indicators primary education, Ministry of Education, 2008/09-2012/13 Table 3-3: Key performance indicators secondary education,
 Ministry of Education, 2008/09-2012/13 Table 3-4: Conversion Table MOE Table 3-5: Condensed Budget MOE, Administrative classification, 2009-2014 Table 3-6: Recurrent, capital and total expenditure of MOE, 2009-2014 Table 3-7: Condensed Budget MOE Economic classification, 2009-2014 Table 3-8: Salary expenditures MOH, 2009-2014 Table 3-9: Expenditure per student, 2009-2014 Table 3-10: Deviation of expenditure from revised budget (recurrent), 2008/09-2011/12 Table 3-11: Expenditures per student for pre-school, primary, secondary and tertiary education, 2012/13 Table 3-12: Distribution of students by wealth quintiles, as a percentage of all students attending a particular level of education Table 3-13: Total expenditures for schooling by education level and wealth quintile Table 3-14: Total spending for education for boys and girls, MICS Table 3-15: Total spending for education in urban and rural areas, MICS Table 4-1: Number of cash transfer programmes’ beneficiaries Table 4-2: Female share among cash transfer programmes’ beneficiaries Table 4-3: Cash transfers and services’ beneficiaries share (15-65) age group Table 4-4: Summary of ALMPs in Saint Lucia Table 4-5: Number of reported ALMPs beneficiaries Table 4-6: Female share among ALMPs beneficiaries Table 4-7: ALMPs’ beneficiaries share (15-65) age group Table 4-8: Summary of child related social protection and education programmes in Saint Lucia Table 4-9: Number of SP/Education programmes beneficiaries Table 4-10: Female share among SP/Education programmes’ beneficiaries Table 4-11: SP/Education programmes’ beneficiaries share (15-65) age group Table 4-12: Conversion table MOST Table 4-13: Condensed budget MOST, Administrative classification, 2009-2015 Table 4-14: Condensed budget MOST economic classification, 2009-2015 Table 4-15: Recurrent, capital and total expenditure of MOST, 2009-2014 Table 4-16: Revenues MOST, 2009-2015 Table 4-17: Staff expenditures MOST, 2009-2015 Table 4-18: Deviation of expenditure
 from revised budget (recurrent), 2008/09-2011/12 Table 4-19: SSDF income, 2010- v Table 4-20: SSDF expenditures, 2010-2014 Table 4-21: SSDF administration costs, 2010-2014 (constant 2012/13 prices, per cent) Table 4-22: Comprehensive expenditure and administration costs overview – Cash transfers (in constant 2012/13 prices) Table 4-23: Comprehensive expenditure and administration costs overview – ALMPs (in constant 2012/13 prices) Table 4-24: Comprehensive expenditure and administration costs overview – child related programmes (in constant 2012/13 prices) Table 4-25: KPIs Social protection programmes Table 4-26: Demographic characteristics of PAP beneficiaries, 2013 Table 4-27: PAP beneficiaries by length of time in the programme, 2013 Table 4-28: Total monthly amounts of PAP by gender of the recipient, 2013 Table 4-29: Total monthly amounts of PAP per region, 2013 Table 5-1: Reported victims of child abuse by gender Table 5-2: Number of new beneficiaries of different centres/programmes 2009-2014 Table 5-3: Number of institutionalized children in the Bordelais correction facility 2006-2011 Table 5-4: Budget allocations child protection 2009/10-2013/14 in constant (2012/13) prices Table 5-5: Information on child protection staff 2009/10-2013/14 in constant prices Table 5-6: Child protection expenditure per program in EC$ 1000 in constant (2012/13) prices Table 5-7: Child protection expenditure/beneficiary in EC$ in constant (2012/13) prices Table 5-8: Child protection programmes administration cost overview in EC$ 1,000 in constant (2012/13) prices Table 5-9: Reported cases of child abuse and neglect in Saint Lucia Table 5-10: Children in conflict with the law Table 5-11: Children in the Boys Training Centre (BTC) Table 5-12: Boys admitted to (BTC) Table 5-13: KPIs for social programmes in child protection Table 6-1: Clinic attendance
 of primary health care services, 2013 Table 6-2: Patient visits and utilisation numbers for Victoria Hospital, 2010/2011 Table 6-3: Health workers, by number, density and population covered per worker 2010 Table 6-4: Medicine exemptions for 2013 Table 6-5: Conversion table (MOH) Table 6-6: Condensed budget MOH, administrative classification, 2009-2014 Table 6-7: Recurrent and capital expenditure of MOH 2009-2014, Administrative classification Table 6-8: Condensed Budget MOH Economic Classification, 2009-2014 Table 6-9: Remunerations as per cent of Government expenditure on health Table 6-10: MOH Revenues, 2009-2014 (in EC$ 1000 constant 2012/13 ) Table 6-11: Salary expenditures MOH 2009-2014 (in EC$1000 constant 2012/12 prices) Table 6-12: Medical and administration costs, Total, 2009-2014 Table 6-13: Medical and administration costs, Recurrent expenditures only, 2009-2014 Table 6-14: Deviation of expenditure from revised budget (recurrent), 2009-2012 Table 6-15: Ministry of Health KPIs, 2009- vi BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA ABBREVIATIONS ALMP ALOS ARV BCF BEEP Active Labour Market Policies Average Length of Stay Antiretroviral Bordelais Correction Facility Basic Education Enhancement Project BELfund The James Belgrave Micro Enterprise Development Fund Inc. BNTF BTC CADMU CANTA CAPTA CARICOM CARTAC CAS CASP CBSI CDB CDP CEDAW CPIP CRC CRTAC CSO CTM CXC CYEP DSA EC$ ECCB ECCU ECE ESD FDI GDP GGHE GOSL Basic Needs Trust Fund Boys Training Centre Curriculum Development and Materials Production Unit Caribbean Association of National Training Agencies Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act Caribbean Community Caribbean Regional Technical Assistance Center Country Assistance Strategy Community After School Programme Caribbean Basin Security Initiative Caribbean Development Bank Court Diversion
 Programme Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women Constituency Projects and Infrastructure Program Convention on the Rights of the Child Caribbean Regional Technical Assistance Center Central Statistics Office Common Targeting Mechanism Caribbean Examinations Council Caribbean Youth Empowerment Project Dept.
Sustainability Analysis Eastern Caribbean Dollar Eastern Caribbean Central Bank Eastern Caribbean Currency Union Early Childhood Education Education Service Department Foreign Direct Investment Gross Domestic Product General Government Health Expenditure Government of Saint Lucia vii Health Information System Holistic Opportunities for Personal Empowerment Integrated Financial Management Information System International Labour Organization International Monetary Fund Koudmen Sent Lisi Doctor of Medicine Ministry, Department or Agency Millennium Development Goal Ministry of Economic Planning and Development Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey 4 (2012) Multiple Overlapping Deprivations Analysis Ministry of Education Ministry of Health Ministry of Social Transformation Local Government & Community Empowerment Multi-dimensional Poverty Index Men who have Sex with Men Men who have Sex with Men and Women Medium-Term Expenditure Framework National Aids Coordination Committee National Action Child Protection Committee National Apprenticeship and Placement Programme Non-Communicable Diseases Northern Caribbean University National Enrichment and Learning Programme National Emergency Management Organization Net Enrolment Rate National Initiative to Create Employment National Skills Development Centre National Strategic Health Plan National Social Protection Policy National Vocation Qualification Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development Organization of Eastern Caribbean States One Laptop Per Child Public Assistance Programme Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability Productivity Enhancement Training HIS HOPE IFMIS ILO IMF KSL MD MDA MDG MEPD MICS4 MODA MOE MOH MOST MPI MSM MSMW MTEF NACC NACPC NAPP NCD NCU NELP NEMO NER NICE NSDC NSPH NSPP NVQ OECD OECS OLPC PAP PEFA PET viii BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA PFM PPS PRF PS PvtHE SALCC SBTAP SHC SIDS SLTU SMEs Public Financial Management Pharmaceutical Procurement Service Poverty Reduction Fund Permanent Secretary Private Health Expenditure Sir Arthur Lewis Community College Small Business Targeted Assistance Programme Secondary Health Care Small Island Development States Saint Lucia Teachers’ Union Small and Micro Enterprises SMILES Single Mothers in Life Empowerment Project SR SSDF SSNA STEP STR THE UHC UNCRC UNICEF UWI VAT VPU WBR WHO WTO YAEP YEDF Single Registry Saint Lucia Social Development Fund Social Safety Net Assessment Short Term Employment Programme Student:Teacher Ratio Total Health Expenditure Universal Health Care United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child United Nations Children’s Fund University of the West Indies Value Added Tax Vulnerable Persons Unit Well-Being Rates World Health Organization World Trade Organization Youth Agricultural Entrepreneurial Project Youth Enterprise Development Fund ix ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Budget Analysis for Investments in Children in Saint Lucia is authored by Zina Nimeh and Arthur Van de Meerendonk (lead authors) and Franziska Gassmann, Jouke Wortelboer, Eli Stoykova and Daphne Francoise (contributing authors) under the direct supervision and guidance of Jawad Aslam, Social and Economic Policy Specialist and Claudius Emmanuel, Deputy Budget Director at Ministry of Finance, Government of Saint Lucia, Violet Speek-Warnery, Deputy Representative and her successor Muriel Mafico at the UNICEF Office for the Eastern Caribbean Area.
The completion of research and capacity building initiative were made possible by the successful partnership between the Government of Saint Lucia (GOSL), the UNICEF Office for the Eastern Caribbean Area, the UN Women Multi-Country Office for the Caribbean (UN Women) and the Organization of the Eastern Caribbean States (OECS).
The study benefited from the extensive technical review and comments of a Peer Review Group comprising of Debbie Budlender (Technical Advisor for UN Women/ UNICEF in the Eastern Caribbean), Isiuwa Iyahen (Programme Specialist – Economic and Political Leadership, UN Women Multi-Country Office for the Caribbean), Joaquin Gonzalez-Aleman (Regional Advisor Social Policy, the UNICEF Regional Office Latin America and the Caribbean), Ana Gabriela Guerrero Serdan (Social Policy Specialist, UNICEF Peru), Matthew Cummins (Social Policy Specialist, UNICEF New York), Jingqing Chai (Chief, Social Inclusion and Social Policy, UNICEF New York), and Enrique Delamónica (Chief Social Policy, UNICEF Nigeria).
The study has also benefited immensely from the input provided by the participants in the wide consultations that were hold individually, collectively and both internally and with external partners in Saint Lucia and at OECS regional level.

The authors would like to thank all colleagues and partners for their excellent guidance, insights and support.
In particular, they would like to express their gratitude for the inputs of Dr. Reginald Darius, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance and Mr. Darrel Marcus Montrope, Cabinet Secretary, Office of the Prime Minister in Saint Lucia.

In addition, this work was spearheaded by Mr. Claudius Emmanuel, Deputy Budget Director and his team, Mr. Marcus Antoine and Mr. Swithin Donelly at the Budget Department, Ministry of Finance.
x BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA The authors’ special gratitude extends to the following: Ms. Valerie Leon Ms. Juliana Alfred Mr. Augustus Cadette Ms. Laurah John Mrs. Louise St. Juste Mr. Edwin St. Catherine- Ms. Esther Brathwaite Mr. Kendall Khodra Ms. Cointha Sabina Thomas Mr. Dwight Calixte Mr. Melchoir Henry Mrs. Elizabeth Lewis Mr. Perry Thomas Mr. Joachim Henry Mr. Darnell Bobb Mr. Marcellus Joseph Mr. David Popo Ms. Kim Clarke Budget Director Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Social Transformation Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Social Transformation Project Coordinator, Social Safety Net Reform Project, Ministry of Social Transformation Senior Accountant, Ministry of Social Transformation Director of Statistics, Statistics Department Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Education Acting Deputy Chief Education Officer (Planning), Ministry of Education Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Health Health Planner, Ministry of Health Project Manager, National Health Management Information System, Ministry of Health Director, Human Services and Gender Relations, Ministry of Health Coordinator, National Initiative to Create Employment Executive Director, Saint Lucia Social Development Fund Coordinator, Koudmen Sent Lisi, Saint Lucia Social Development Fund Manager, The James Belgrave Micro Enterprise Development Fund Inc. Director Social Development OECS Secretariat.
Last but not least, the authors are grateful to Ms. Khin-Sandi Lwin, (Representative) for her leadership to initiate innovative work on public finance for children in the Eastern Caribbean countries, and the members of the UNICEF team, Ms. Lyanna Harracksingh (Social Policy Liaison Officer), Mr. Anthony George (Social Policy Officer), Mr. Frederic Unterreiner (Chief Monitoring and Evaluation), Mr. Oladimeji Olowu (Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist), Mr. Wycliffe Otieno (Chief Education), Ms. Shelly Ann Harper (ECD Specialist), Ms. Heather Stewart (Child Protection Specialist), Ms. Elaine King (Education Specialist) at UNICEF Office for the Eastern Caribbean Area and Mr. Gerardo Escaroz (UNICEF Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean) for their technical input and comments.
Executive Summary 1 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY © UNICEF/ECA/(2015/Peter Flood) the existing national budget policies, social expenditures and investments in social policies and such allocation of resources are efficient.

This objective tries to answer the question: are public resources allocated sufficiently according to the needs of children, adolescents and families with children?
Secondly, this report assesses whether programmes are implemented in an economically efficient manner and aims to provide an answer to the question: are public resources on these child- related direct and indirect programmes spent in an efficient manner?

Economic growth in Saint Lucia has ground down to almost a complete halt in the past decade.

The real GDP per capita of 3.56 billion EC$ in 2013 was lower than 3.64 billion EC$ in 2008.
The island is vulnerable to economic and environmental disasters, not least because it relies on a small number of economic activities that are highly exposed to international markets and patterns.

From a fiscal perspective, the high debt/GDP ratio stands out.

This ratio has increased over the past decade and stood at 80 per cent in 2013/14.

It is expected to ‘go through the roof’ (100 per cent of GDP) in the near future.
States are obliged to invest as much as possible of their available resources towards guaranteeing the optimum fulfilment of rights safeguarded by the Convention of the Rights of the Child.

This requires governments to assess children’s’ needs in terms of budget allocations and utilize a child rights-based approach in the preparation of the State budget.
In addition clear allocations should be put towards children in the relevant sectors and agencies, and disaggregated information be provided on the proportion of the national budget allocated to the implementation of the rights of the child at the national and local level.

This report “Budget Analysis for Investments in Children in Saint Lucia” aims to assist in this effort by presenting an analysis of the national budget, while reflecting on policies and investments for children in Saint Lucia.
This report analyses the budgets of the various Ministries and semi-autonomous agencies that are responsible for administering programmes in the areas of education, social protection, child protection and health – that is, direct and indirect programmes that benefit children and families with children in Saint Lucia.

The report’s objective is twofold.


Firstly, it sets out to evaluate whether 2 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA The Government is working hard to improve its public financial management (PFM).

Successes include the streamlining of macroeconomic and fiscal forecasts, the move towards integrated budget preparation and economic planning, and enhancement of the strategic content in the budget preparation process.
The reform of PFM for Saint Lucia is of crucial importance to improve the financial planning and governance of child related social programmes in Saint Lucia.

Two issues are of particular relevance for the discussion on child rights-based budgeting in the context of Saint Lucia’s overall PFM reform.

Firstly, the formulation of performance indicators – in SMART terms – that help to reduce the incremental nature of the budget and turn it more into a strategic venture has only just started.
Secondly, there is no unified framework for recurrent and capital expenditure – the capital (development expenditure) budget is prepared parallel to the recurrent expenditure budget and the two are not integrated at a later stage, despite the fact that there are hidden recurrent costs in capital expenditure.

In this report, the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for education, social protection, child protection and health can be a model for annual data collection for the Ministry of Finance (MOF).
It can be perceived as an elaboration of performance-based budgeting in the area of direct and indirect social spending on children.

In addition, some effort has been made to disentangle recurrent and capital expenditure items and to bring both to a level of detail where meaningful claims as to allocative and operational inefficiencies can be made.

Saint Lucia’s population is aging.


However, it can still be considered relatively young given that almost half of the population are under the age of 30 and around one fourth of the population are under the age of 14.

In 2013, 30 per cent of the population were under the age of 18.

In addition, the declining fertility rates and increasing life expectancy at birth are causing an increase in the average age of the population.
In addition, birth rates have declined, but there is a large segment in the 15-24 age group who are at the threshold and/or are making their entrance into the work force.

The labour market over the past decade has not been able to absorb the inflow, and is unlikely to be able to in future.

Over 50 per cent of Saint Lucia’s unemployed are in the 15–29 age group.
Based on the existing information it is impossible to assess the poverty risk of the population in Saint Lucia and whether their situation has improved or worsened.

The latest poverty analysis dates back to 2006.

The limited information that is available in this area indicates that certain population subgroups remain vulnerable to either become or remain poor.

These include children, women, the elderly and people living in rural areas.
Looking at household composition, individuals living in single-person households, households with more than three children, female-headed households, and households with relatively young heads have a higher risk of being poor.

Analysis based on data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS 4) further indicates that in terms of material well-being, children are on average worse off than adults.

One out of three children in Saint Lucia is multi-dimensionally deprived.
Analysis of child well-being in the health and nutrition domain revealed that approximately 5 per cent of Saint Lucian children are undernourished.

With respect to education, the analysis indicated that most of the children in Saint Lucia attend primary school education, whereas attendance rates are considerably lower for secondary school, and particularly for children living in large households.
The study showed that children’s access to information is high: 97.4 per cent of all families with children own a TV, phone, radio or computer.

With regards to child protection, the average well- being rate of children in Saint Lucia needs attention, especially the issue of corporal punishment, which seems to be widely accepted as a method to restore discipline.
All in all, the overall average child well- being rate in Saint Lucia is 66.1 per cent, signifying that two out of three children are well-off (i.e.

in all but one dimension).

Improvement in the overall child well-being rates could be achieved (amongst other interventions) through improvements in the domains of child protection and sanitation facilities, especially in rural areas.
Children living in large Executive Summary 3 families and those living with a single adult also deserve extra attention, since these children are frequently comparably worse off1.

8.4 percent of the budget went to tertiary education while 15.2 per cent of the total education budget has been allocated to central administration.

Saint Lucia’s social budget spans close to one- quarter of total government expenditure or 8 per cent of GDP.
Moreover, expenditure on social programmes has been rather stable at the level from 2009/10 onwards.

Within the overall spending portfolio, education (4 per cent of GDP) and health (around 2.5 per cent of GDP), take the largest share.

Expenditure on child protection programmes has been stable at 0.5 per cent of GDP ever since 2011/12.

Expenditure on social protection programmes has been more volatile.

This applies in particular to social protection programmes for the working age population.
Spending on social protection for children – education related programmes, such as school feeding and bursaries – has been quite stable at around 0.2 per cent of GDP.

Expenditure on ALMPs has fluctuated between 0.4 per cent of GDP in 2011/12 to 1.1 per cent of GDP in 2012/13, and spending on cash transfers and social services for families stands at 0.3 per cent of GDP.

This is a decrease from its 0.5 per cent of GDP level in 2011/12.
EDUCATION Overall, the allocation of resources towards the MOEs budget measured consistently (2012/13) following a hike in 2012/13 (212 million EC$), returning to just below its 2009/10 level, around 187 million EC$ in 2013/14.

This includes expenditure on child related social protection programmes and, standing at 4.7 per cent of GDP, is therefore higher than the 4 per cent of GDP mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Over the year 2009/10 to 2013/2014, expenditure on primary, secondary and tertiary education exceeded 70 per cent of the education budget.

On the other end of the scale, the share of spending on ECD is a meagre 1.2 per cent.

The average spending per student during early childhood education is only 562 EC$ while the amount spent per person in tertiary education is 6,854 EC$, which is more than 10 times higher.
In stark contrast to ECD spending, Of expenditures, 85 per cent are recurrent and only 15 per cent of the total expenditure is capital expenditure.

In recurrent expenditure, primary and secondary education are major cost centres, 34.4 per cent and 39 per cent respectively.

The large majority of capital expenditure was in administration, which makes up to 77.3 per cent of the total.
Considering that the public sector is the main provider of education services in Saint Lucia, expenditure on salaries represent two thirds of the total budget and has crowded out other items.

Of the total budget, 66.3 per cent is allocated to salaries and primary (94 per cent) and secondary (87 per cent) are the largest share of these salary costs while 10.3 per cent of the budget is allocated to grants and contributions and 1.3 per cent to training.
While this high level of expenditure can be explained, with such large portions going to salaries, very little remains to cover other important facets of the education system.

For example only 0.1 per cent of the budget goes to student welfare support, which holds programmes like the bursaries programme and the school transportation programme, and only 1.5 per cent is spent on special education.

Budget spending execution2 did not improve in the period 2009/10 to 2011/12.
The budget spending execution has been exceeding from 2008 to 2010, i.e., 1.3 per cent overstepped in 2008/09, 0.3 per cent in 2009/10 and 2010/11 respectively.

However, this trend reversed with 2.7 per cent less spending execution than budgeted in the year 2011/12.

As expected, average spending per student rises with the advancement in the educational level.
However, children from the poor segments of society are benefiting very little with the investment in the post-secondary or higher education in Saint Lucia.

Most students in the post-secondary or 1 For full analysis on child well-being in Saint Lucia, Nimeh, Z., Van de Meerendonk, A., Stoykova, E. Gassmann, F., & Wortelboer J.

(2015).

Mapping of Child Well-being in Saint Lucia, UNICEF Office for the Eastern Caribbean Area.
2 Spending execution, that is: to what extent the actual expenditures are in line with the (revised) budget.

Note that 2011/12 is the last Fiscal Year (FY) where the budget as approved in parliament could be compared to the actual execution of the budget.

4 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA tertiary education are found in the richer quintile, with 34.9 per cent belonging to the richest quintile and only 3.5 per cent – to the poorest quintile.
The teacher:student ratio in primary education is decreasing from 1:20 (2009/10) to 1:17 (2012/13), and in secondary education from 1:17 (2009/10) to 1:14 (2012/13).

There are plans to increase the ratio in the coming years.

One key strategic shift could be training and reassigning primary and secondary teachers to early childhood education (ECD) as qualified/trained practitioners.
While gender disparity between males and females on the primary level is not very evident, the situation differs in secondary school.

There are 10 per cent more males attending secondary schools than females, however the pattern turns when the actual achievement is observed.

Additionally, females are almost 25 per cent more likely to go on to post- secondary education.
SOCIAL PROTECTION Social protection: the budget of Ministry of Social Transformation (MOST) Overall, the allocation of resources towards the MOSTs budget measured in constant prices in 2012/13, measuring 43.9 million EC$ in 2013/14, which is below its level in 2009/10 of 44.9 million EC$.

In between, the budget allocated to the MOST peaked at 75.9 million EC$ in 2010/11 and remained stable at around 55 million EC$ in the period afterwards.
The most recent year, therefore, represents a significant drop in spending.

Spending execution has shown improvement.

In earlier years, a significant amount of underspending was reported but in more recent years actual expenditure has been close to the approved budget.

The exception is welfare service expenditures which exceeded the (latest revised) budget by more than 17 per cent.

The share of non-specified expenditure, itemized as ‘other costs’, is high.
This raises the question whether the budget applies the proper categories to be transparent, informative and relevant.

Capital expenditure is high for the Ministry of Social Transformation.

It is observed that a little over half of the Ministry’s expenditure is capital expenditures, which is unexpected for a social programmes ministry.

Staff salaries, on average, are exceptionally high, more than twice the average level of the other ministries reviewed.
In fact, there has been a boost in the total sum of salaries in 2010/11, which was not reflected by a similar increase in numbers of staff.

This warrants further attention.

Looking into the SSDF budget, it has to be noted that the major programmes that SSDF administers have reduced expenditures significantly in the most recent year.

The exception is the Koudmen Sent Lisi (KSL) programme that has been rolled out from a pilot programme into a regular programme.
Data collection is below par for social protection programmes.

This report lists a table with KPIs which is incomplete or missing information.

However, it can be a model for annual data collection for the MOF in line with the objective to achieve performance-based budgeting in the area of social protection spending.

Child related social protection programmes Most of these programmes fall under the remit of the Ministry of Education.
This is for a good reason as one of the main objectives of these programmes is, and should be, the facilitation of free and universal basic education for children from poor and vulnerable families.

The overall spending on these programmes, 0.2 per cent of GDP, compared to, for example, 4.1 per cent for education or 1.1 per cent for ALMPs, is very low.
To put this into perspective, the number of Saint Lucians under the age 20 is almost equal to the number of Saint Lucians between the ages of 20 and 40 years.

This is the age group most ALMPs are targeting with almost six times the budget that is allocated for social protection programmes for children.

Executive Summary 5 The proper level and mechanism of targeting might be an issue.
Where the laptop programme might be justified for reasons other than social protection, the grounds for providing a once-off bursary to all children entering secondary school are disputable.

With the same resources, a more effectively targeted programme could do much more to help children from poor and vulnerable families.

the For programmes such as the school feeding programme, level of administration costs reveals that administration, including targeting, is performed in an efficient manner.
low per capita of respect to KSL, problems is crucial its multidimensional With in addressing the often approach multi-faceted disadvantaged households and individuals.

Efforts and resources can be targeted even more effectively by focusing on households, and even female-headed households, rather than individuals.

Moreover, the programme is expensive in its per capita spending – both in its programme expenditure and administration costs.
Hence, it is not a programme that could be rolled out on a large scale.

It might be feasible to build in some of the successful elements in other programmes – notably the public assistance programme.

For most of the programmes, information was not available to arrive at such conclusions.

This is an issue that warrants further discussion by the Government of Saint Lucia.

In addition, monitoring and evaluation need to be improved.
Commendable is the collection and reporting of information as part of the annual Education Digest.

However, to ensure adequate governance of the various programmes, including their coordination and, in particular, their scope to be complimentary, more programme specific information needs to be collected from the administrations.

Cash transfers and other services that directly or indirectly benefit children The level of overall spending on these programmes is low.
If the Government is serious in its poverty alleviation objectives, more public resources should be channelled to the most successful of these programmes.

In general, social protection programmes in Saint Lucia suffer from insufficient clarity and focus in their objectives.

This very much applies to the ALMPs, but also to some of the services for households.

The transfer of public assistance to MOST has been a good decision.

It has created opportunities for better coordination of efforts and resources.
MOST improving monitoring and evaluation and continues to work on further improvements in its data collection and organization.

invests significant effort in BELFund and YEDP are rather costly programmes, both in their per capita programme expenditure and administration costs, despite the fact that compliance (loan recovery ratios) are generally reasonable.

This raises some questions as to whether the targeted beneficiaries cannot be assisted in less costly ways.
Active labour market programmes - ALMPs ALMPs represent a major share of Government expenditure.

The total GDP share of expenditure for ALMPs is in the range of 0.5 and 0.9 per cent of GDP, and between 1.5 and 3 per cent of Government expenditure.

In fact, in terms of GDP share of spending on ALMPs Saint Lucia out-spends even more advanced industrial economies.
This, in combination with the earlier observation of low spending shares on other programmes, raises questions as to whether there is sufficient balance in public resource allocation across the entire spectrum of social protection.

In terms of current numbers of participants, the various ALMPs could absorb the entire unemployed youth population (aged 15 to 34 years).
This clearly overshoots the proper target as it may be expected that the majority of unemployed in any age category should be able to find its way into employment without any help from an employment agency.

It appears that a large number of these programmes are overshooting in terms of per capita spending on jobseekers.

This is an issue of cost-effectiveness.

Some of the programmes might achieve similar, if not better outcomes, with less costly instruments.
6 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA it is difficult to attribute In general, labour market outcomes to ALMP measures as there is no counterfactual (that is: what would the state of the labour market situation have been without the measure).

However, looking at youth unemployment rates over recent years, well above 30 per cent, it cannot be claimed that outcomes of the existing programmes are very good.
In line with the previous point, the wage levels paid in some of the programmes are high, relative to the level of subsistence and to the average market wages.

This adds to the attractiveness of the programme and makes it doubtful whether these programmes provide sufficient incentives to exit them or, in fact, to even start looking for a job independent of the programme.

Some of the programmes produce as an outcome the referral of a jobseeker to another programme.
Where in individual cases this might be justified, it should not be the main objective.

The main objective should be to empower participants to find and maintain a job that suits her/his motivation and qualifications.

There are too many ALMPs and too many administering agencies.

This leads to problems of overlap, duplication and coordination failures that the Government wants to address in the NSPP.

It would be useful to merge agencies and create something similar to a public employment service.
In line with the previous point, per capita administration costs could be significantly reduced if agencies with similar activities merged.

The Government should monitor these costs and fix them to ceilings.

CHILD PROTECTION Expenditure on the various programmes for child protection is scattered across Ministries.

The child protection programmes administered by the Human Services Department fall under the Ministry of Health while the Boys Training Centre falls under the Ministry of Social Transformation.
Other programmes fall under various other MDAs (Home Affairs, Legal Affairs, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Supreme Court).

The spreading of programmes for child protection across ministries, results in difficulties with comprehensive analysis of child protection programme expenditures, as not all of the necessary information is available.

From the limited information available, there is a concern over the apparent decreasing budget affecting child protection programmes.
Only 1.2 per cent of Government revenues allocated to child protection programmes in 2013/2014 corresponded to 0.3 per cent of GDP.

In real terms, since 2008/09, the budget share in GDP has fluctuated around 0.3 percentage points.

The overall spending on child protection programmes is rather meagre.

Despite expenditure on staff salaries increasing over time for child protection programmes, it remains below average salary levels in the health and education sectors.
The actual budget allocation for child protection programmes is a critical test of the commitment to uphold the rights of children, especially at a time when funds are tight and demand is rising.

In the absence of clear budgetary allocations for child protection it is difficult to collect information and ensure that continual monitoring of policies for protection of children’s rights is taking place.

Objectives in the area of child protection are not clear and coordination on a national level is lacking.
While intentions are good, and there is a voiced commitment towards improving child protection, there is no clear overarching document which commits all responsible stakeholders to jointly advancing the situation of child protection in Saint Lucia.

The establishment of the NACPC has been a step in that direction.

However, NACPC lacks a clear mandate, and the necessary authority and resources to effectively carry out an effective coordinating role.
HEALTH It is not clear how the budget allocations devoted to children’s priorities are determined.

There is no information on utilisation for almost all health care provisions, except primary health care.

This raises some concerns as to children’s priorities in the Executive Summary 7 allocation of resources in the MOH’s budget.
Overall, the allocation of resources towards the MOHs budget measured consistently (2012/13), at 163 million EC$ in 2013/14, which is below its level in 2009/10 (167 million EC$).

In between, the budget allocated to the MOST has been volatile, with significant drops in budget allocation in 2010/11 and again in 2012/13.

represent Administrative two expenditures thirds of the total budget and half of recurrent expenditure.
These resources are not available for services that might benefit children and families with children.

Some two thirds of the health care budget is allocated towards administration.

Even within recurrent expenditure almost 50 per cent is administrative overheads.

Overall, spending execution has improved.

However, sizable re-allocations within the overall expenditure portfolio have remained.
In addition to this, there is still a substantial overspending on administration, compared to the (revised) budget that has been submitted to Parliament.

Most of the programme expenditures fall into the functional classification and one third of the total budget is allocated to the three large hospitals.

This is even larger when one looks just at recurrent spending.

The share of general hospitals in total recurrent expenditure is 50 per cent.
This comes at the expense of other sectors that receive a much reduced slice of the cake.

Other programmes that might be more cost-effective receive far fewer resources.

Expenditure on primary health care decreased in real terms (constant prices) between 2009/10 and 2013/14 from EC$ 12.1 million to EC$ 9.3 million.

Since primary health services are crucial for children and families with children, this calls for urgent attention.
FUTURE OUTLOOK AND RECOMMENDATIONS The recommendations in this study are not meant to address gaps in child rights and how they should be fulfilled, as this is beyond the scope of this report.

This report should be utilised as a base for further work to advance a long term child responsive budget approach in Saint Lucia and other countries in the Eastern Caribbean area, which includes a clear system of classifying expenditures related to children that can identify resource allocation across priorities.
The Government of Saint Lucia can advance the realization of children’s rights through the development of a country specific, child and gender responsive budget framework which grounds its approach in an evidence-based analysis of aspects of child rights that are identified as lacking or that remain unfulfilled.

This framework would form a situational analysis or equivalent diagnostic, which is feasible with the amount of research that has taken place related to child rights in Saint Lucia.
An annual budget in itself is too limited and spans too short a time frame for addressing all children’s priorities, which require sustained implementation efforts and policies stretching over a longer period.

The budget cycle needs to be nested within a longer-term policy and planning process, which provides a clear link from planning to the allocation of resources (Norton and Elson, 2002, p. 8).
This is an item which is on the agenda of the ongoing budget reform in Saint Lucia and is therefore supported.

By establishing such a framework, the government would give headway to the implementation of article 4 of the CRC through prioritizing budgetary allocations with a view to ensure the rights of children and in particular those who belong to vulnerable groups.

An overarching question guiding the budget process should be: What do we want this budget to do?
And, especially, what do we want it to do for children?

Budgets can be regarded as institutional instruments for the realisation of child rights as well as attaining gender equality.

The Government of Saint Lucia can then make use of different stages in the budget cycle (formulation, approval, execution and oversight) to incorporate child rights-related commitments.

The widening Government deficit and increasing public debt pose a challenge.
Given that there is little discretionary room in the current government budget, a possible strategy is to further extend the 8 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA tax base in order to create fiscal space for investments in education, social protection and child protection and health policies.
However, in order to assess the impact and effectiveness of public spending with respect to outcomes for children and other vulnerable groups, it is imperative to analyze the living standard of the population and identify those groups which are most at risk of living in poverty.

Child poverty analysis is not only essential for measuring policy outcomes, but it is an essential tool for policy planning and decision making in a context of limited financial resources.
Additionally, this type of information can be used to feed into the fine-tuning of policies that aim to specifically alleviate child poverty on the island.

Education There should be a focus on the first years of education for the greatest efficiency and effectiveness, including early childhood interventions in larger programmes which can enhance the programmes’ efficacy.
Increased investment in early childhood development (ECD) would not only have an enormous impact on children, but would address inequality and influence the development trajectory of countries.

There is no question that teachers exert a tremendous impact on academic performance, however, there has to be a more in-depth examination as to whether the answer lies with teacher’s salaries alone.
In Saint Lucia, salary expenditures in primary and secondary education are crowding out expenditures on other important inputs, and an under-provision of these inputs can have a detrimental impact on the quality of education.

Social protection Monitoring and evaluation need to be further improved.

For adequate governance of the various programmes, including their coordination and, in particular, their scope to be complimentary more programme specific information needs to be collected.
When considering alleviation objectives, the Government’s poverty better management and channelling of public resources should be implemented.

Efforts and resources can be targeted even better by focusing on households, and even female-headed households, rather than on individuals.

Further examination is required to establish how some of the programmes mentioned can achieve similar, if not better outcomes, with less costly instruments.
For example, per capita administration costs can be significantly reduced if agencies with similar activities would merge.

The Government should monitor these costs and fix them to ceilings.

The key performance indicators table in Chapter 4 can be a model for annual data collection for the MOF.

It can be perceived as an elaboration of performance-based budgeting in the area of social protection spending and child protection spending.
Child protection Structured support to child protection programmes of different respective ministries would be a step in the right direction.

There has to be a resolute and serious undertaking in the planning element when thinking about budgets or budget items which involve child protection schemes and programmes.

This has to be approached systemically and with a proactive future outlook.
It is pertinent that child protection programmes receive priority when considering a future undertaking of primary data collections in Saint Lucia.

While it is also important to identify additional data needs on less visible themes, corporal punishment and child poverty is a good starting point.

Better data, coupled with the Government’s commitment, will pave the way for child protection programmes to receive the required financial necessities.
Health Health sector budget allocations devoted to children’s priorities need to be addressed.

One way would be child-related tagging of the Government budget.

This is the most sophisticated avenue to pursue and given that the government of Saint Lucia is in the process of adopting performance- Executive Summary 9 based budgeting, such an intervention deserves serious consideration.

This would require the collection of age specific utilization information and age specific cost breakdown of services.
For generic services, such as administration and public health programmes, age specific utilization shares could be constructed, and the information translated into child-related tags that can be used to monitor the extent to which budget allocations and expenditure are in line with the share of children and specific children’s needs.

Utilization related to costs need to be better understood.

Is the money going to the right places?


In particular, is sufficient amounts going towards services that are important for child survival?

The information required to answer these questions is currently not available, and further examination into this matter should be prioritised.

The Ministry of Education information on the utilization of education services on an annual basis.
The chapter on education can serve as an example of how this information can be used in child budgeting analysis for health care as this is a gap that needs to be filled urgently.
is collecting 10 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA © UNICEF/ECA/(2015/Marcille Haynes) 11 11 1 Introduction In Article 4 of the Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC) provides for the obligation of States to invest the appropriate resources for guaranteeing that all the rights safeguarded by the convention are fulfilled to the maximum extent of the available resources.
its most recent communication regarding the implementation of the Convention of the Rights of the Child in Saint Lucia, the Committee on the Rights of the Child (2014) acknowledged the Government of .Saint Lucia’s efforts to maintain the allocation of resources to the most vulnerable groups of society, including children, given the ongoing economic crisis.
However, it also urged the Government to assess the needs of children in terms of budget allocations, utilize a child-rights approach in the preparation of the State budget, with clear allocations for children in the relevant sectors and agencies, and provide disaggregated information on the proportion of the national budget allocated to the implementation of the rights of the child at the national and local level (pp.

4-5).
4-5).

This report aims to assist in this effort by presenting an analysis of the national budget, while reflecting on policies and investments for children in Saint Lucia.

The objective of a related report, published 12 © UNICEF/ECA/(2015/Marcille Haynes) in the same series, is to examine and explore fiscal space for sustainable financing of existing as well as additional investments and spending that benefit poor households and children in particular.
The starting point of this endeavour is the understanding that such a fiscal space needs to exist or be created in order for government to increase or improve on spending for children, the poor, and other vulnerable groups in the population in a sustainable manner.

The analysis focuses on social sector spending, which includes education, health, child protection and social protection.
And, while child and gender responsive budgeting is necessary for the progressive realization of children and women’s rights and well-being, it should be acknowledged that spending decisions have to be taken against the backdrop of the necessity of maintaining fiscal and macroeconomic stability.

Moreover, whether a certain policy measure is deemed affordable is eventually a matter of political will and commitment.

Budgets are a monetary reflection of all government policies.
They not only relate to those who issue them (e.g.

finance ministries), but also to those who BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA draft them, and ultimately implement and prioritize the policies that underlie them (e.g.

line ministries).

They do not merely relate to economic policy but rather they reflect the social contract between government and citizen and take into account social and economic considerations.
Without political and civil consensus on how to implement human rights or conventions such as the CRC, long-term financial commitment is difficult to obtain.

Structure of the Report 1.1 Chapter 2 sets the stage for the subsequent analysis.

It provides an overview of recent economic, social and demographic developments.
Following chapter 2, the report provides an in-depth analysis of the specific budgets relevant for the development and well-being of children: Chapter 3 focuses on education, Chapter 4 on social protection, Chapter 5 on child protection and Chapter 6 on health.

The four chapters follow a somewhat similar structure.

Each chapter begins with an introduction to the topic and an examination of policies and planning (and legislation where relevant).

This is followed by a general programmes overview.


The examination of the budget is then laid out, and each chapter concludes with a discussion and conclusion.

The report concludes with a chapter on closing remarks and future outlook.

Government Actors 1.2 The obligation to invest in policies protecting the rights of children is not the prerogative of one single ministry or government agency.
Policies and programmes aimed at the protection of children, the poor and other vulnerable groups fall under the realm of different sector ministries and their implementing agencies.
The budget analysis in this report focuses specifically on four ministries, which are pivotal in contributing to child rights: •• Ministry of Finance, Economic Affairs and Social Security •• Ministry of Health, Wellness, Human Services and Gender Relations •• Ministry of Education, Human Resource Development and Labour •• Ministry of Social Transformation, Local Government and Community Empowerment3 While the analysis is concerned primarily with the aforementioned ministries, other ministries will be touched on as needed, to provide for a comprehensive mapping of relevant programmes across ministries, departments and agencies.
information Data and methdology 1.3 The analysis in this report draws on primary and from multiple sources.

secondary Key sources for the budget analysis are official Government budgets, policy and planning documents, detailed budgets from sector ministries and from specific publicly financed programmes for children.

In close collaboration with the relevant ministries and supported by UNICEF, the team collected detailed budget information during field visits to Saint Lucia.
In addition, the report draws on secondary data published by the Central Bank and the Central Statistical Office of Saint Lucia.

The analysis also uses a vast array of existing publications, such as journal articles, working papers, project and policy reports, and other general and legal documents.

An overview of the sources used is provided at the end of the report.
The budget analysis presented in chapters 3 to 6 distinguishes between programme and administrative costs, which required the realignment of the administrative and economic budget classification.

It allows the allocation of spending towards operations and beneficiaries.

Capital and recurrent expenditures are analysed separately and in combination in order to obtain a comprehensive overview of programme expenditures.
Finally, nominal amounts are converted into constant (real) prices for the identification and analysis of spending (and revenue) over time.

The actual budget analysis is guided by four underlying tasks.
Firstly, to investigate the allocative efficiency of the budget, secondly to look at its economic efficiency and thirdly either conducting a benefit incidence analysis or examining the effectiveness of 3 The names of the ministries will be used interchangeably in this report, as the function of the ministry is of the overarching importance.

Introduction 13 budget allocations.

Finally, a list of key performance indicators specific to each issue is presented.

challenge as far as data was concerned.


Insufficient it difficult to assess whether the data made allocations match the needs and rights of children.

Data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey – Round 4 (MICS4) were used for the analysis of material poverty and child well-being which is discussed in chapter 24.

The MICS is a standard UNICEF survey which contains a wide range of questions related to child well-being, including nutrition, education, reproductive health, and housing.
The MICS4 survey was implemented in March-May 2012.

The sample contains 1718 households (4922 individuals) and is representative at the national level.

Limitations 1.4 Ideally, a benefit incidence analysis would have been part of each sector chapter.

Such an analysis allows assessing to what extent budgetary allocations are redistributive, but also to what extent different groups of the population benefit from government spending.
A benefit incidence analysis requires information at the individual level regarding the actual use of government services.

It also requires information on the welfare level of households and individuals in order to assess whether a certain policy or programme is pro-poor.

Furthermore, the analysis requires information on government spending per capita.

This information is only systematically available for education, where allocations to schools are based on the principle of per-capita funding.
For the other social sectors, the available data was insufficient to assess whether allocations match the needs and rights of children and other vulnerable groups, and how far the commitments made to children’s rights through policy and programmes are being translated into reality.

Neither is it possible to assess whether allocations are equitable from a gender perspective.

Additionally, some other missing data severely affected the depth of the analysis.
This included the unavailability of age specific health care utilization statistics.

Except for a few health programmes, it was not possible to link budget allocations or expenditure to children.

The section on child protection constituted the biggest Without having a comprehensive picture of how the allocation proportions were actually spent, it was not possible to do a comprehensive and in-depth analysis as was possible with the other chapters.
With regards to social protection in Saint Lucia, large amounts of data have been collected.

Often, these were not standardized in the information system.

The challenge, therefore, was mainly at the staff level of the various agencies administering these programmes to meet this report’s data requests.

For a number of programmes, there was insufficient information to go into the desired level of depth in the analysis.

This is reflected in the discussion of the various social protection programmes.
For some programmes it was possible to go a few steps further than for others.

The MICS4 data, while perfectly suited for the analysis of child well-being and the situation of women, does not collect information on income or consumption.
This also implies that there is currently no information on the coverage, distribution and adequacy of social transfers.5 The authors are, however, extremely grateful to all who have invested a sizable share of their time and effort to collect and provide these data, which despite its limitations made the writing of this report possible.

The gaps in the data described above could be taken as an agenda for Government action in the near future.
The report serves as an illustration of what can be done in terms of analysis when the required data are available.

Process 1.5 This report is one of three.


The objectives as reflected in the TORs were threefold: (i) analyze existing national budget policies, social expenditures and investment in social policies for the needs of children in Saint Lucia, (ii) analyze the existing ‘allocation and operational’ effectiveness and 4 See accompanying report on the mapping of child wellbeing for more in-depth analysis: “Child Well-being in Saint Lucia: a multidimensional analysis”.
5 Note that since the last representative household survey containing data on income, consumption and benefits was implemented nearly nine years ago (LSM/HBS from 2005/2006), there is a lack of up-to-date information which would allow an impact assessment of social protection programmes.
14 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA efficiency of direct and indirect public allocations for children, and the degree to which gender responsive budgeting and policy development has impacted on this effectiveness and efficiency, and prepare recommendations for increasing the effectiveness and efficiency and review the impact on public finance of national development policies for children, and (iii) analyze the overall economic and financial situation of Saint Lucia, ensuring a gender-responsive analytical lens, to identify the scope of available and potential fiscal space to spend for social protection on a sustainable manner.
The table below provides an overview of the activities and outputs.

The team conducted tree missions to Saint Lucia.

The first (February – March 2014) was for interviews and information collection purposes required to undertake the budget analysis and construct an assessment matrix providing an overview of relevant programmes, their design and implementation challenges.
The second mission (June 2014) was for clarification, further collection of budget information, presentation of the first results and to collect information with respect to benefit incidence.

The third mission (November 2014) was to present the preliminary results and introduce the costing model in a seminar with stakeholders in Saint Lucia.
Phase I. Mapping existing programmes Table 1-1 Overview of Activities and Outputs Activities Outputs •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• •• Conduct agencies, collecting information interviews with ministries and other Construct an inventory of social protection and child protection programmes in Saint Lucia •• Inception report •• ‘Assessment matrix’, this is an overview design, of programmes: implementation and challenges relevant Assess the financial governance framework •• Draft first version ‘Benefit Incidence Review expenditure in areas of social expenditure relevant for children, with a focus on: health, education, child protection and social protection Assess benefit allocations incidence focusing at public the needs and Assess expenditures for children impact from social Report’ •• Draft first version ‘Budget Report’ •• Meeting with Ministries (June 2014) Assess framework, in particular related to children the planning and implementation Assess the allocation of budget resources towards their stated objectives ‘economics’ of spending: develop Assess the benchmarks to assess the choice of inputs related to programmes for children II.
Analysis of the administrative and allocation efficiency of existing social protection programmes, related to children •• Produce an overview of the overall macroeconomic and fiscal environment, and fiscal management, including a projection of key economic and fiscal variables •• Formulate a proposal for a minimum SPF package for Saint Lucia (preparing phase III) •• Draft final ‘benefit incidence report’ •• Draft final ‘budget report’ •• draft first version of ‘fiscal space report’ •• Seminar with national stakeholders to discuss the draft reports and work with the costing model (November 2014) III.
Analysis of fiscal space and •• Estimate the short, medium and long term cost of the •• Draft final ‘fiscal space report’ costing of a SPF package for Saint Lucia SPF package •• Estimate the amount of fiscal space required to finance both existing and envisaged policies IV.
Recommendations and dissemination •• Final versions of the three reports (June 2015) •• (Training on the costing model) Introduction 15 2 Economic and Social Context © UNICEF/ECA/(2015/Marcille Haynes) Economic and fiscal environment 2.1 Key economic and social indicators for Saint Lucia over the past five years are presented in Table 2-1.

In recent years growth rates have been low and volatile.
Real GDP per capita in 2013 was lower than in 2008 and unemployment rates have been high and continue to rise—up from 16.3 per cent in 2008 to 23.3 per cent in 2013.

At the same time, the labour force participation rate has been increasing.

In 2013, 80 per cent of the population participated in the labour force.

This chapter presents a brief overview of the general socio-economic situation in St Lucia.

It provides the contextual background to the subsequent chapters in this report.
The chapter draws from multiple sources, including results from the 2010 Population and Housing Census6, the latest Labour Force Survey from 2013, and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS4) from 2012.

It starts with an overview of the economic and fiscal environment of Saint Lucia providing the economic context for the subsequent chapters.

The chapter then continues with a description of the demographic situation and a concise review of the labour market of Saint Lucia.
Finally, the chapter outlines the poverty and child well-being situation using the limited information currently available.

6 Data from the Saint Lucia’s 2010 Population and Household Census and a preliminary report can be found online on the webpage of the Central Statistical Office: stats.gov.lc.
16 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 2-1: Selected economic and social indicators for Saint Lucia, 2008–2013 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 Nominal GDP, Billion EC$ Real GDP, Billion EC$7 Real GDP growth, per cent Inflation rate, per cent Unemployment rate, per cent Female unemployment rate, per cent Labour force participation rate Female labour force participation rate 3.20 3.64 4.7 7.2 16.3 19.3 76.4 69.3 3.19 3.63 -0.1 -1.7 19.1 20.6 77.6 73.5 3.38 3.61 -0.7 3.3 20.6 22.0 75.7 68.9 3.50 3.66 1.4 2.8 21.2 23.3 78.8 75.7 3.56 3.61 -1.3 4.0 21.4 23.6 81.7 77.3 3.56 3.56 -1.5 3.1 23.3 25.5 81.4 77.5 Population size 163,857 164,726 165,595 169,130 172,363 172,631 Real GDP per capita, EC$8 22,192 22,060 21,761 21,860 21,348 20,804 Debt/GDP ratio, per cent 56.2 61.1 63.4 66.5 71.7 80.1 Source: GOSL (2014); CSO (2014b); CSO (2014a); IMF (2014).
Note: Inflation rates as moving average, taken as of December each year.

Inflation rates for 2012 and 2013,78come from an updated, but different data source than previous numbers, namely CSO (2013a).

2013 Real GDP growth figure was taken from the IMF (2014).

Numbers for earlier years corresponded with CSO numbers.

The 2011 unemployment rate uses the average for the first and second quarter only.
The public debt of Saint Lucia has been increasing substantially over the last decade, due to large increases in Government spending in recent years.

In 2002, the debt-to-GDP ratio was a relatively healthy 59.2 per cent, but reached 80.1 per cent in 2013 and is expected to increase even further (see Figure 2-1).

The challenges for Saint Lucia’s government are eminent.

The Government budget statement of 2013 briefly states Saint Lucia’s concerns: “Our challenge: high debt, low growth” (GOSL, 2013a, p. 9).
Figure 2-1: GOSL Public Debt (left) and Debt/GDP (right), 2003–2013 Source: GOSL (2014) 7 Base year 2013 8 Base year 2013, own calculations (real GDP / population) based on CSO (2014b).

Economic and Social Context 17 2.2 Fiscal operations and management Public financial management One of the dimensions where governments can find fiscal space is in the streamlining of their public financial management (PFM), with a view to render government’s financial operations more effective and efficient.
One side is the improvement increase of revenue collection – for example, compliance, introduce reliable revenue forecasting mechanisms, etc.

The other side is in planning and implementing expenditures in an effective and efficient manner – for example, ensuring that spending is in line with political preferences and is planned well so as to minimize surprises, reduce administrative overheads within MDAs, etc.
In order to improve their budget and planning processes, governments in an increasing number of countries have term expenditure frameworks (MTEF).

introduced medium Saint Lucia introduced its first MTEF in the late 1990s.

Later, the Government’s focus broadened to include the strengthening of budget execution, commitment control and accounting, and the development of an integrated financial management information system (IFMIS).
Saint Lucia is currently in the process of developing from a medium term fiscal framework (MTFF) towards attaining the highest level – that is, the development of a MTEF.

Two (PEFA) (independent) public expenditure reports have been published over the past decade, the last one in 2009.

In general, PEFA reports look into six critical areas of PFM.
These are (i) the credibility of the budget, (ii) comprehensiveness and transparency; (iii) policy based budgeting, (iv) predictability and control in the budget execution, (v) accounting, recording and reporting, and (vi) external oversight (PEFA, 2009).

Where the thrust of the earlier (2006) report was towards improvement across the board, the 2009 PEFA report highlighted some stagnation – with improvements recorded on 1 indicators) against deterioration on 8 indicators (PEFA, 2009).
In terms of the credibility of the budget, recurrent expenditure has a better rating than capital expenditure.

In terms of transparency, the budget is deemed adequate.

However, the report identifies several indicator (out of 28 18 significant revenue and expenditure items that are not recorded in the budget.

It is not clear what the current status is on this important issue.
Some issues in the PEFA (2009) report have been taken up since – for example, the shift to performance budgeting which aims to link the budget on a one-to-one basis with outputs and outcomes.

improvement In one area, external oversight, the practice is still inadequate.

This became clear when the latest audit report available at the time of writing this report turned out to focus on FY 2009.
The one indicator that showed in 2009 compared to 2006, was the quality and timeliness of annual financial statements.

Indicators that were stagnant or deteriorated were (inter alia) the accrual of arrears, oversight of other public entities, effectiveness in collection of tax payments, and the proportion of foreign aid inflows managed through the Government of Saint Lucia.

From a fiscal space perspective, in particular the latter two are of crucial importance.
If compliance in tax collections is slipping and Government is not capable to act against this, this shuts down one of the avenues for creating fiscal space for social spending.

Likewise, if Government cannot control substantial shares of foreign aid inflows, there is a risk of allocative and operational inefficiencies in the use of these resources.
It has been stated that the share of inflows that remains outside the consolidated budget is insignificant.9 Strategic planning for the budget starts in April (Fiscal Year) FY-1 when, throughout the summer, strategic directions and fiscal targets are developed.

The economic outlook for the operational fiscal year, and revenue, recurrent expenditure and capital expenditure projections are formulated.

Ministries, departments or agencies (MDAs) submit proposals and the initial budget allocations are drafted.
In August/September, detailed estimates are prepared and discussed between the budget office and the MDAs.

The estimates are submitted, with recommendations from the budget office, to cabinet (see Table 2-2).

9 Interview with senior officials from MoFs Budget Office.
BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 2-2: The budget calendar of Saint Lucia Key Task Activities Responsibility Indicative completion date Medium term fiscal framework National budget call circular MOF prepares draft medium term fiscal framework • • • • aggregate expenditure ceilings, updated revenue forecasts, projected and target fiscal balance baseline budget and forward estimates ceilings for each ministry indicative expenditure priorities (including possible priority investment projects).
Budget office 31/8 Cabinet approves medium term fiscal framework Cabinet 15/9 Budget call circular issued to all agencies setting out baseline budget ceilings and requirements for: • preparation of programme-based annual budget and two forward years estimates in accordance with the baseline budget ceiling’ and new spending requests (above initial ceiling) , savings options, and revenue measures (i.e.
fees and charges) • Budget office 15/9 30/11 30/11 15/12 1-15/1 17/1 21/1 Agencies submit 2014/15 budget submissions Agencies submit baseline estimates (i.e.

2014/15 budget estimates and 2015/16 and 2016/17 forward estimates by programme).

Agencies Agencies submit proposed new spending requests (budget pressures and new initiatives, savings options and revenue proposals.

Agencies Budget office rejects and returns incorrect or incomplete submissions to agencies for amendment and resubmission.
Budget office, Agencies Bilateral consultations with agencies Budget office meets with agencies to discuss new spending proposals and proposed revenue measures in the context of the Government’s strategic objectives and fiscal targets.
Budget Office, Agencies Budget technical committee Policy committee meeting with PM Budget meetings with PM Final budget estimates MOF updates medium term economic and fiscal outlook report MoF Budget office presents draft budget to budget technical committee Budget office, Technical committee PM meets with policy committee to finalise new spending requests, savings options and proposed revenue measures.
Policy committee 31/1 Agencies meet with PM to discuss expenditure policy priorities Agencies Cabinet meets to approve final budget ceilings including approved new spending requests, savings options and revenue measures Cabinet Budget office and agencies make final adjustments to budget estimates in accordance with final budget ceilings and policy decisions.
Budget office 15/2 28/2 28/2 Budget office prepares budget ceiling reconciliation tables for each agency to highlight all approved adjustments between baseline budget ceilings (i.e.

2014/15 and 2015/16 forward estimates rolled forward from 2013/14) and final budget ceilings.
Budget estimates and appropriation bill submitted to Parliament Budget approval Budget debate Budget approved Source: Authors’ compilation Budget office 28/2 Minister of Finance Parliament Parliament 28/2 1-31/3 31/3 Economic and Social Context 19 In the spring, until mid-March, the budget documents are prepared and following that, end- March, Cabinet approves the budget and submit it to Parliament.
Budget documents submitted to Parliament include the Minister’s budget statement, economic report, financial statement containing the consolidated budget and detailed budget estimates and output based estimates of each of the MDAs in administrative and functional breakdowns.

In addition to this, MOF should prepare the public sector investment plan, which is also to be submitted to Parliament.

However, over the past decade no public sector investment plan has been submitted to Parliament.
Throughout the fiscal year, MDAs report on a quarterly basis on the implementation of budget plans and performance of planned results.

Improvements are ongoing in the following areas:10 a.

The inclusion macroeconomic and fiscal forecasts in the budget b.
The integration of budget preparation and economic planning c. Reducing the incremental (‘bottom-up’) nature of the current budget preparation process and turning it into a more strategic venture With regards to these points, the Government of Saint Lucia, with assistance from the Caribbean Regional Technical Assistance Center (CARTAC), has embarked on an important reform to improve the PFM framework and address some of the challenges.
First, it has adopted ‘rolling’ three-year budget estimates to establish hard annual and multi-year budget ceilings to underpin a medium- term expenditure framework (see below).

The aim here is to develop forward estimates to establish ‘hard’ multi-year budget ceilings that serve to underpin the preparation of formal programme- based budget submissions and estimates in a more strategic rather than incremental manner.
The second element of the reform process calls upon Government to prepare the annual budget and forward estimates in a programme-based format.

The aim of programme-based budgeting is to better align budget allocations to Saint Lucia’s strategic policy goals and priorities (CARTAC 2013)11.
In fact, in 2013, the Government of Saint Lucia published, for the first time, forward estimates of recurrent expenditure for the following two fiscal years (that is, 2014/15 and 2015/16) as a part of the 2013/14 annual estimates of revenue and expenditure.

Moreover, the draft budget call circular requires MDAs to submit savings options in a more rigorous manner.

The aim here is to provide Cabinet with a ‘menu’ of savings options to prioritize spending requests and/or meet its fiscal targets.
This should eliminate the practice of submitting rather vague across the board spending cuts that are seldom linked to planned reductions in services, hence leading to additional funding requests or the accumulation of arrears (CARTAC 2013).
Hence, focusing on the objectives and planned results of Government expenditures, programme- based budgeting is an important tool for assisting Cabinet to make choices between competing demands for scarce budget resources as well as for evaluating the results and cost-effectiveness achieved from budget programmes (CARTAC 2013).
According to the new budget call circular, MDAs are required to submit their 2014/15 budget and forward estimates in a revised format including the listing of their mission statement, strategic objectives, organizational objectives, programmes, programme objectives, programme costs (recurrent and capital by economic category), planned strategies for 2014/15 (that is, specific strategies aimed at improving performance) and output and outcome indicators and targets (CARTAC 2013).
Hence, budget and performance information are now merged into a single format.

The new format also reduces the level of detail in expenditure categories (both functional and economic) and in staff categories, focusing now more on the proportion of staffing resources allocated to front line services (CARTAC 2013).

10 This information was captured from an interview with senior officials from the MOF’s Budget Office.
11 The CARTAC (2013) report presented factual information related to the budget allocations, moreover, the team verified the information given in this section with the Budget Office in Saint Lucia.

Additional and illustrative points have been presented when necessary.
20 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Included in the PFM reform are several new tools, to be implemented in this and subsequent FYs, that aim to support fiscal discipline and a more effective prioritization of budget allocations – such as a budget scorecard, a cabinet decision table and a budget ceiling reconciliation table, all meant to strengthen the planning process and render the budget process more transparent.
There is some scope for further improvement; two issues are of particular relevance for the discussion on budgeting for children in Saint Lucia.

Firstly, the formulation of performance indicators – in SMART terms – that help to reduce the incremental nature of the budget and turn it into more of a strategic venture has only just started.
Secondly, there is no unified framework for recurrent and capital expenditure – the capital (development expenditure) budget is prepared parallel to the recurrent expenditure budget and the two are not integrated at a later stage, despite the fact that there are ‘hidden’ recurrent costs in capital expenditure.
In this report, Budget Analysis for Investments in Children in Saint Lucia, some effort has been made to disentangle recurrent and capital expenditure items and to bring both to a level of detail where meaningful claims as to allocative and operational inefficiencies can be made.

Demographic trends 2.3 With a total population of 182,270 in 2013 (UNICEF 2014), Saint Lucia is a small country.
In spite of the fact that Saint Lucia’s population is ageing, it can still be considered relatively young given that almost half of the population is under 30 years old and around one fourth of the population is under 14 years old (CSO, 2010b).

In 2013, the total number of children under 18 was 53,370, accounting for 30 per cent of the population and 14,000 children were under 5 (UNICEF, 2014).
Table 2-3 shows the composition of Saint Lucia’s population by age category, demonstrating that the fastest growing age group consists of the 18-64 year olds.

In 2002, 55.5 per cent of the population belonged to this age group, increasing to 61.5 per cent in 2010.

Between 2000 and 2012, the percentage of children in the age category of 0-17 decreased by seven percentage points (from 37 to 30 per cent12), which could be the result of decreasing birth rates and ageing of the population.
The crude birth rate decreased from 28 to 15 life-births per 1,000 between 1990 and 2013 (UNICEF 2014).

The older population (65+) remained relatively constant, accounting for no more than 7.5 to 8.6 per cent of the population in the entire period.
12 Authors own calculation on the basis of CSO, (2010b) Table 2-3: Population structure (as a percentage) Ages 0-5 Ages 6-14 Ages 15-17 Ages 18-64 Ages 65+ Total Source: CSO, (2010b) 2002 2010 Males Females Total Males Females Total Economic and Social Context 21 Figure 2-2: Population pyramid in 2001 and 2010 2001 2010 Source: CSO (2010b) Note: the large group of one year olds might be a data issue.
The data used to create the pyramid are not smoothed.

Single years are used (contrary to regular 5-year intervals) which may result in incidental data irregularities.

In 2010, this large group has disappeared.

The population pyramids in Figure 2-2 confirm the findings in Table 2-3.
The 2001 pyramid has a considerably broader base than the 2010 pyramid, indicating that in 2001 a larger share of the overall population was concentrated in the youngest age categories and hence that on average the population on the island used to be younger.

The two driving factors explaining this development are (1) a declining fertility rate and (2) an increase in life expectancy at birth.

With regards to the former, between 1990 and 2013 Saint Lucia’s fertility rate fell from 3.4 to 1.9 (UNICEF 2014).
Notwithstanding that teenage pregnancy remains a major challenge on the island, this decrease can partly be explained by a drop in teenage pregnancies (Blank, 2009).

With regard to life expectancy at birth, between 1990 and 2010 the average number of years that a newborn was expected to live increased from 72 to 77 years for men and from 73 to 77 years for women (The World Bank, n.d.).
Table 2-4 shows that dependency ratios are decreasing, a development driven by the lower number of children in the population.

However, older persons as a percentage of the working age population are increasing, confirming the trend of an ageing population.
Table 2-4: Dependency ratios13 (per cent) of working age population 2000 2005 2010 2012 Young 53.6 44.3 Old 12.6 11.3 38.1 12.8 36.3 13.1 Total 66.2 55.5 50.9 49.4 Source: The World Bank (n.d.) 13 Showing the number of dependents (aged 0-14 and over the age of 65) to the total population (aged 15-64).
22 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Figure 2-3: Distribution of population per area (per cent) t n e c r e P Source: CSO (2002); CSO (2010b) Area Over time, the size of the average Saint Lucian household has decreased steadily.

Whereas in 1991 the average household consisted of 4 persons, the average household size decreased to 3.3 persons in 2001 and further declined to a size of 2.8 persons in 2010.
According to Saint Lucia’s Central Statistical Office (CSO) 42.5 per cent of households are headed by females.

Considering other countries in the region, the relatively high proportion of female- headed households is not uncommon (CSO, 2011).

The distribution of population per area is shown in figure Figure 2-3.

Saint Lucia is a predominantly rural society.

Only 18 per cent of the population live in urban areas (World Bank, n.d.).
However, in 2010, approximately 41 per cent of Saint Lucia’s population were living in the Castries district (including the capital city), which makes it both the most highly and most densely populated (2,139 persons per square mile) district in the country (CSO, 2011).

The constant movement of individuals towards the urban centres of the island can be explained by the fact that the agricultural sector is shrinking, especially as a result of the downturn in the banana industry14.
The reducing significance of agricultural 14 Overall, the agricultural sector has been on a general decline due to several economic, technical and institutional factors.

The sector performance has been strongly influenced by market conditions in the EU.

Banana exports have declined by almost 50% since the mid-1990s (Singh, Rankine, & Seepersad, 2005).

production has led to poor employment prospects in rural areas and has triggered increased migration towards urban areas (Henry-Lee, 2004).
Labour market 2.4 Labour market participation in Saint Lucia has increased considerably since 2002 (Table 2-5) Overall, participation increased from 74.2 to 81.4 per cent.

Although male participation is still higher, female labour force participation increased from 68.6 to 77.5 per cent over a period of ten years.
Table 2-5: Key labour market statistics (as a percentage) 2002 2007 2012 2013 Labour force participation, both sexes Male Female Unemployment rate, both sexes Male Female 74.2 80.3 68.6 20.5 17.4 24.0 75.0 81.1 69.1 14.5 10.4 19.2 81.7 86.0 77.3 21.4 19.4 23.6 81.4 85.3 77.5 23.3 21.3 25.5 Source: calculated from CSO LFS data Economic and Social Context 23 Table 2-6: Unemployment rate by age group and sex, 2013 Age group Male Female Total 15-19 Years 20-24 Years 25-29 Years 30-34 Years 35-39 Years 40-44 Years 45-49 Years 50-54 Years 55-59 Years 60-64 Years Over 65 Years Total 21.3 25.5 23.3 Youth unemployment 35.7 44.1 40.0 Other adult unemployment 17.5 17.8 16.3 Youth/adult ratio 2.04 2.49 2.43 Source: CSO (2013b) Note: Youth defined as persons 15-29 years of age.
Authors’ calculations for youth unemployment rates and youth/adult ratio.

However, the prime risk that the working-age population of Saint Lucia faces is unemployment (Blank, 2009; Cultural Marketing Communication (Caribbean) Ltd., 2011).

While the unemployment rate was as low as 14.5 per cent in 2007, in the aftermath of the economic crisis it increased to 23.3 per cent in 2013.

The labour market in Saint Lucia since 2008 has not been able to absorb the growth of the labour force (Gimenez et.
al 2015) Unemployment rates are still higher for women (more than two percentage points in 2013).

Youth unemployment in Saint Lucia constitutes a major challenge for young persons living on the island.

According to the latest labour force survey, over 50 per cent of the unemployed are between the ages of 15 and 29, resulting in a youth unemployment rate that is more than 15 percentage points higher than the national average for the total 24 population (Gimenez et.

al.

2015).
al.

2015).

Young women are more likely to be affected than young men.

In 2013, 44 per cent of young women between the ages of 15 and 29 were unemployed, compared to 36 per cent of young men in the same age category (see table 2-6).

Much of the unemployment in Saint Lucia is structural and reflects the inability of the educational system to adequately prepare the workforce for the labour market (Kairi Consultants Ltd., 2011) and the lack of employment opportunities.
According to the CSO (2014b), long term unemployment (i.e.

more than six months) amounted to approximately 75 per cent in 2008 and 2009, 68 per cent in 2012 and roughly 60 per cent in 2013.

This decrease could indicate an improvement in the educational system or the effect of the various active labour market programmes that the Government of Saint Lucia has implemented; however this requires further examination.
Table 2-7 provides an overview of the composition of Saint Lucia’s employed population by splitting it into categories according to the status of the employed.

The table reveals that roughly two thirds of the total formal labour force consists of paid employees, while the self-employed make up 23 per cent.

The remaining 7.9 per cent of the employed population could not be classified based on the available data.
In addition, the table shows that while employed men are more likely to be paid employees, employed women are more likely to be self-employed.

Furthermore, males more frequently work in a government job than females, while the latter are more likely to be own account workers.
According to the ILO-definition of vulnerable employment, which is defined as “the proportion of own-account workers and contributing family members in total employment”, Saint Lucian women are more prone to be employed in activities falling under this definition than Saint Lucian men.

As a result, they are more vulnerable to economic shocks because of the insecure nature of their work and the potentially lower earnings.
BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 2-7: Employed population by status of employment and sex (per cent), 2013 Total paid employed Of which Paid employed (Government) Paid employed (private) Total self-employed of which Employer Own account worker Contributing family member Member of a production cooperative Not classifiable Total Male 74.2 Female 63.2 Total 68.3 20.4 53.8 18.5 3.5 14.1 0.9 0.0 7.3 13.2 50.0 28.3 7.1 20.8 0.3 0.1 8.5 16.5 51.8 23.8 5.4 17.7 0.5 0.1 7.9 100.0 100.0 100.0 Source: CSO (2014a); CSO (2012a).
Note: Own recalculation of figures (not done consistent by CSO).

Category ‘apprentice’ was left out, as there were no observations in this category.

Saint Lucia does not have a legal minimum wage (Henry-Lee, 2004).

According to CSO (2013b), the median and mode of monthly gross income in Saint Lucia amount to 1200 and 1999 EC$ per month in 2013 respectively.

Informal employment15 accounts for a considerable proportion of Saint Lucia’s labour market.
The most recent informal sector survey estimates informal workers to account for 27.3 per cent of all employees16, while generating 8 per cent of (nominal) GDP, most of which originates from informal agricultural work17 (CSO 2010a).

Poverty and child well-being 2.5 The latest country poverty assessment conducted in 2006 estimated that 28.8 per cent of the population was poor (Kairi Consultants Limited, 2008).
Poverty appeared to be concentrated in 15 Informal employment here is defined as employees who have no written contract and do not a pay slip.

16 This is considered to be a slight drop compared to the year 2000 when the proportion of informal workers in the labour market stood at 30.5 per cent (Henry-Lee, 2004).

This could include for example street vendors, ex-farmers and fishers.
17 Includes: livestock, fisheries and forestry rural areas with rural quarters having poverty rates between 38 and 45 per cent.

Saint Lucia remains highly vulnerable to external shocks of both financial and environmental nature similarly affecting other small island developing states18.

responsibilities intergenerational The most vulnerable population subgroups are children; women; elderly and persons living in rural areas.
All of these groups are relatively more prone to face transient and chronic multidimensional deprivations, which frequently are the product transmission of poverty, of lack of social mobility, household composition, unemployment, and the nature of household childcare 2013).

Additionally, previous studies have found that persons living in female-headed households are more likely to be poor than those living in male- headed households.
Single mothers with children – particularly those that are not receiving adequate support from a male partner – are at an even greater risk of poverty due to the lack of entitlement to economic support as well as lack of childcare facilities, making it difficult for single mothers to participate in the labour market19.

(UNICEF, A more recent perspective on household poverty and well-being can be derived from the MICS4 data, collected in 2012.
Although, MICS4 does not collect data on monetary indicators, such as income or expenditures, the data allow for an assessment of material well-being based on the wealth index.20 Figure 2-4 shows that single-person households are highly concentrated in the bottom of the wealth distribution.

Hence, persons living in these households are noticeably worse-off than larger households.
their counterparts To illustrate this, 40.4 per cent or single-person living in 18 The state is ranked as highly vulnerable as measured by volatility of real per capita GPD and output, ranking the 19th most vulnerable out of 111 developing countries (Social Safety Net Assessment, 2009).

40.3% of Saint Lucia’s population, or an additional 11.5% to those already below the poverty line, are considered vulnerable (Kairi Consultants, 2006).
19 For more on these studies refer to Kairi Consultants (UNICEF, 2010).

20 The wealth index is constructed using information regarding ownership of household assets (such as types of floor, roof, wall, type of cooking fuel, radio, television, mobile phone, land line phone, bicycle, motorcycle, boat, car/ truck, source of drinking water, type of sanitation facility).

Through principal component analysis each asset is assigned a specific weight, and a wealth score is calculated for each household.
For a detailed description of the wealth index methodology, please see Rutstein and Johnson (2004) and Filmer and Pritchett (2001).

Economic and Social Context 25 households belong to the poorest wealth quintile and only 5.2 per cent to the richest.

Although among larger households the wealth distribution is less regressive, individuals living in households with many children (i.e.

three or more) are more likely to be among the poorest than those living in households without children.
Almost 30 per cent of persons living in households with three or more children belong to the poorest wealth quintile, as compared to 19.4 per cent of persons living in households without children (see figure 2-5).
Figure 2-4: Distribution of individuals by wealth quintiles, different household size, as a percentage 5.2 11.9 19.2 23.4 40.4 I S E L I T N U Q H T L A E W or more Number of household members Source: Authors’ own calculations based on the MICS4 from 2012.

Note: The differences are statistically significant at the 1per cent level.
For explanation of the wealth quintiles, please refer to the explanation of the wealth index explanation in footnote Figure 2-5: Distribution of individuals by wealth quintiles, different number of children in the household, as a percentage 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% I S E L I T N U Q H T L A E W 10.8 20.5 21.5 18.8 19.4 25 21.9 20.6 18.4 13.1 20.7 19.9 20.4 19 20 12.3 16.9 16 25.4 29.4 no children 1 child 2 children 3 or more children Number of children in the household Source: Authors’ own calculations based on the MICS4 from 2012.
Note: The differences are statistically significant at the 1 per cent level.

For explanation of the wealth quintiles, please refer to the explanation of the wealth index explanation in footnote.

26 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA The wealth of households varies in accordance with the age of the household head; persons living in households with younger heads (i.e.
between 18 and 35 years of age) typically are more likely to belong to the poorest wealth quintile than those living in households with an older head (see figure 2-6).

Approximately 27 per cent (25 per cent) of individuals living in households with a head under 25 years old (between 26 and 35 years old) belong to the poorest wealth quintile.
The lower wealth level of young households may be related to the high unemployment rate among young adults and the reduced income earning potential of particularly young women with children due to care responsibilities.

Considering that households with children under 5 years of age constitute about a quarter (25.6 per cent) of the households with heads between the age of 26 and 35, this group deserves extra attention.
Whether an individual is living in a male- or female-headed household makes no difference at the bottom of the wealth distribution.

However, male-headed households have a higher likelihood of belonging to the top wealth quintile, while female-headed households are more likely to find themselves in the second and third quintile.
To illustrate this, figure 2-7 overleaf shows that only 12.9 per cent of persons living in households with a female head belong to the richest fifth, as compared to 25.3 per cent of persons living in male-headed households.
Figure 2-6: Distribution of individuals by wealth quintiles, households by different age of household head, as a percentage I S E L I T N U Q H T L A E W 18-25 26-35 36-45 46-55 56-65 Over 65 Age of the household head Source: Authors’ own calculations based on the MICS4 from 2012.

Note: The differences are significant at the 1per cent level.
For explanation of the wealth quintiles, please refer to the explanation of the wealth index explanation in footnote.

Economic and Social Context 27 Figure 2-7: Distribution of individuals by wealth quintiles, households by gender of household head, as a percentage I S E L I T N U Q H T L A E W 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% 25.3 20.5 16.9 17.8 19.5 Male 12.9 19.3 24.2 23 20.5 Female Gender of household head Source: Authors’ own calculations based on the MICS4 from 2012.
Note: The differences are statistically significant at the 1 per cent level.

For explanation of the wealth quintiles, please refer to the explanation of the wealth index explanation in footnote.

In order to assess the adequacy of public resources dedicated to children in Saint Lucia and the impact of policies (both direct and indirect) on different aspects of children’s lives, it is necessary to monitor the situation of children.
The regular analysis of child well-being (and deprivation for that matter) helps to efficiently allocate financial resources where they are most needed and to design effective policies for children.

With regards to material well-being based on the wealth index, the analysis shows that on average children in Saint Lucia are worse off than adults, especially those living in rural areas, large households and households headed by a single adult.
Also children living in households headed by a woman tend to be more frequently materially deprived as compared to their counterparts who are living in male-headed households (see figure 2-8).
Figure 2-8: Distribution of children among wealth quintiles, as a percentage I S E L I T N U Q H T L A E W Source: Authors’ own calculations based on the MICS4 from 2012.

Note: The differences in wealth distribution are statistically significant at the 1per cent level between areas and gender of household head.
The difference between children in single-adult households and children on average is statistically significant at the 1per cent level.

28 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA In addition to material well-being (based on the wealth index), the subsequent analysis evaluates four different dimensions of child well-being, including health and nutrition, education, child protection and access to information.
Finally, a composite index is used to assess overall child well- being in Saint Lucia.

The analysis is entirely based on MICS4 data from 2012.21 The well-being rates in the housing and water and sanitation domains are low considering the development state of Saint Lucia.

According to the MICS4, in 2012 about 36 per cent of children did not live in proper dwellings and 30 per cent did not have access to hygienic toilet or drinking water.
Children from households with a single adult and children from urban areas seem to be worse-off with respect to housing conditions.

Children living in rural areas, on the other hand, are characterized by even lower well-being rates in the water and sanitation domain, mainly due to lack of proper toilet facilities.

The majority of households on the island do not own a means of transportation, making public transport crucial for mobility.
Analysis of child well-being in the health and nutrition domain revealed that approximately 5 per cent of Saint Lucian children are undernourished, with girls on average being better nourished than boys and children in male-headed households being better nourished than those in female- headed households.

Detailed analysis with respect to immunization of children was not possible due to the fact that MICS4 data do not contain this information.
With regards to education, the analysis reviewed different educational stages separately.

Children in households headed by men are more likely to be enrolled in pre-school education than children in female-headed households, as are children in smaller-sized households.

Almost all children in Saint Lucia seem to attend primary school education, whereas attendance rates are considerably lower for secondary school, particularly for children living in bit households.
After the age of 17 years, only 54.6 per cent are attending some level of schooling.

Overall, the access of children to information is high: 97.4 per cent of all children own a computer, or TV/radio and a phone.

Conversely, with regards to child protection, the average well-being rate of children in Saint Lucia has room for improvement.
This is particularly due to the fact that corporal punishment seems to be a widely accepted method to restore discipline: 40 per cent of children are subject to a harsh discipline at home.

The overall average child well-being rate in Saint Lucia amounts to 66.1 per cent (see table 2-8), signifying that 2 out of 3 children are doing well (i.e.
in all but one dimension).22 Improvement of the overall child well-being rates could, amongst others interventions, be achieved through improvements in the domain of child protection as well as with regard to sanitation facilities, especially in rural areas.

Children that are part of big families and those living with a single adult also deserve extra attention, since these children are comparably worse off.
21 The analysis of child well-being presented in this section is a summary of a separate report produced by the authors: “Child Well-being in Saint Lucia: a multidimensional analysis”.

The report contains the detailed description of the methodology used for the assessment of child well-being in Saint Lucia, including related limitations of the study, as well as an extensive analysis of the results.

Please refer to this document for comprehensive information on the method, limitations and results.
22 Please note that the composite well-being index used here is based on a relaxed definition of well-being, allowing a child to be well-off even if she/he is not well-off in one of the dimensions included in the index.

From a human rights perspective, for a child to be truly well-off she/he should be well in all dimensions.

Taking this approach would result in a lower overall child well-being rate in Saint Lucia than the one noted above.
Economic and Social Context 29 Table 2-8: Overall well-being rates, by age group, as a percentage of all children in the age group Number of observa- tions in the sample Gender of house- hold head Gender of child M F M F Number of children in the household 1 2 3 or more Total Overall well-being rates Child Well Being rate, age 0-2 Child Well Being rate, age 3-4 Child Well Being rate, age 5-11 Child Well Being rate, age 12-16 Child Well Being rate, age 17 Child Well Being rate, all children 0-17 176 124 484 452 102 92.8 85.0 80.1 65.3 88.1 89.7 1338 81.2 68.7 68 62.7 77.8 69 54.2 ** 56.1 74.6 66.1 Source: Authors’ own calculations based on the MICS4 from 2012.
Note: The differences in total child well-being rates are not statistically significant across age groups, between children of different gender, or between children living in male- and female-headed households.

* = the difference is statistically significant at the 10per cent-level; ** = the difference is statistically significant at the 5per cent-level; *** = the difference is statistically significant at the 1per cent-level.
Conclusion 2.6 This chapter aimed to provide an overview of the economic and social environment providing the context for the analysis of public spending related to children in the following chapters.

Although Saint Lucia seems to have withstood the recent economic crisis, the country’s economy is still volatile.

In order to stimulate economic growth and address the high level of unemployment, more reforms are needed.
According to the IMF, reforms should focus on strengthening the education system, improving the business climate and making product, labour and financial markets more efficient (IMF, 2013).

The widening Government deficit and increasing public debt need to be addressed.
Given that there is little discretionary room the in the current government budget, a possible strategy is to further extend the tax base in order to create fiscal space for investments in education, and social protection, child protection and health policies.

This is discussed more in depth in the accompanying report Fiscal Space for a Social Protection Floor in Saint Lucia.
30 fertility increasing rates and With regards to the development of the population living in Saint Lucia, this chapter showed that declining life expectancy at birth are causing the average age of its population to increase.

Although Saint Lucia’s population is currently still relatively young and dependency rates are not yet alarming, the ageing trend of its population – which is projected to continue – might constitute a challenge in future.
The labour market situation is characterized by relatively high unemployment rates, a comparably weaker position of women compared to men and a large share of activities taking place informally.

With regards to the position of women in the labour market, the fact that women are both more prone to be unemployed and – in the event that they are employed – more likely to fall into the category of “vulnerable employment” would indicate that labour market policies on the island require gender mainstreaming.
In addition, youth in Saint Lucia is particularly vulnerable to unemployment.

While the lack of appropriate skills may partly explain their relatively high unemployment rates, the BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA weak economy coupled with limited employment labour market jeopardize active opportunities participation in general.
Based on the existing information it is impossible to assess the poverty risk of the population in Saint Lucia and whether its situation has improved or worsened.

The latest analysis of monetary poverty dates back to 2006.
However, in order to assess the impact and effectiveness of public spending with regards to outcomes for children and other vulnerable groups, it is imperative to regularly analyse the living standard of the population and identify those groups which are most at risk of living in poverty.

Poverty analysis is not only essential for measuring policy outcomes, but it is an essential tool for policy planning and decision making in a context of limited financial resources.
living The available information indicates that certain population subgroups remain vulnerable.

These include children, women, elderly and persons living in rural areas.

Looking at household composition, in single-person households, individuals households with more than three children, female- headed households, and households with relatively young heads have a higher risk of being poor.

Analysis based on data from the MICS4 further indicates that children are on average worse off than adults.
One out of three children in Saint Lucia is deprived multi-dimensionally.

The analysis has shown that investments in, for example, child protection systems or sanitation could improve the situation of these children significantly.

This type of information can be used to feed into the fine- tuning of policies that aim to alleviate poverty on the island.
Economic and Social Context 31 3 Education This chapter focuses on education, starting with a brief overview of the education system in Saint Lucia, followed by a description of the institutional framework, legislation.

including policies and Furthermore, it presents a brief overview of education programmes for various age categories, and then continues into an in-depth discussion regarding is complemented with a benefit incidence analysis for the education sector.
The chapter concludes with a discussion and future insight.

the education budget, which 3.1 Short overview of the education system in Saint Lucia Compulsory education in Saint Lucia starts at age 5.

However, children within the age range of 1-4 years23 can enroll in the non-compulsory early childhood education (ECE) centres.

Secondary school starts at age 12; with the formal age range for public secondary education being 12-16 years.
There are seven grades in primary school and five grades in © UNICEF/ECA/(2015/Marcille Haynes) secondary school.

(Ministry of Education, 2013).

After completing secondary education, students can enroll in post-secondary or tertiary education.
According to the most recent Education for All National Review Saint Lucia has a total of 134 ECE centers, 5 special education centers, 75 public and 6 private infant/primary schools, 23 public and 3 private secondary schools, 2 public post-secondary/ tertiary Institutions, 4 private universities and 3 public skills training institutions that also provide a second chance to basic education24.

Additionally, there are many distance education providers (Chitolie-Joseph, 2014).
Thus, the public sector is the main provider of education services in Saint Lucia, which translates into roughly 96 per cent of student enrolment in publicly owned schools and enrolment, and 7 per cent of enrolment in the privately owned sector (Tareq, Simone, del Granado, & Kapsoli, 2010).
The national strategies, plans and targets for education are outlined in the Education Sector 23 There are some centres where children enrolled are 5 years old, despite the fact the formal primary education commences at age 5.

This is due to the fact that few children have their birthday on the day the new educational year begins.
24 This chapter will only cover education up to secondary education 32 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Development Plan (ESDP) 2009-2014, which builds on the previous plan (2000-2005).

Plan development involved a wide sector and stakeholder participation as well as the incorporation of regional and international education commitments which had become part of the national agenda (Chitolie- Joseph, 2014).
3.2 Policies and planning 3.2.1 Laws and other basic regulations concerning education The legislation which governs education in Saint Lucia, stems from the 1977 Education Act No.

18 which was repealed by the 1999 Education Act No.

41 of November 1999 (Education Act 1999).

Additionally, the teaching Service Commission Act of 197725 and the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College Act of 1984, are regarded as the legislation designed for guiding tertiary education in the country (IBE, 2010).
3.2.2 Administration and management of the education system The overall administration of the education act and thus the education system is controlled and coordinated by the Ministry of Education, Human Resource Development and Labour26, (Formally the Ministry of Education and Culture).
for develops The Education Service Department (ESD) within the Ministry ensures that schools and educational in a proper and institutions are administered administrative efficient manner; principles and procedures implementing general policies administering the school system; initiates curriculum innovation and reform and establish appropriate procedures for evaluating the instructional programmes.

The ESD is under the supervision of the Chief Education Officer (IBE, 2010).
In addition, there are also the key sections of Curriculum Development and Materials Production Unit (CADMU); Educational Planning; and Educational Testing and Evaluation (IBE, 2010).

25 With this Act, the Teaching Service Commission became responsible for all appointments, transfers, discipline and dismissal of teachers.

The independence of this Commission is protected in accordance with the Constitution, which came into effect in 1979 (IBE, 2010).
26 Referred to in this report at Ministry of Education or ME The management structure also includes a team of eight education officers — previously known as district education officers — who have individual responsibility for each of the eight school districts.

Their functions cover only primary schools and they come under the supervision of the education officer for primary schools (Chitolie-Joseph, 2014, IBE, 2010).
There are also curriculum officers who are expected to provide leadership in developing and reviewing the curriculum for the different subject areas.

These are attached to the Curriculum Unit (CAMDU) and report to the education officer who heads up that unit.
The management of public schools is predominantly done by the Ministry and to a lesser extent by the church through church boards (Chitolie-Joseph, 2014).The three denominational authorities — Anglican, Catholic and Methodist — all have management boards for the respective schools (IBE, 2010).

All private schools are owned and managed fully by private individuals or boards, which also includes church schools owned by the Seventh Day Adventist Church (Chitolie-Joseph, 2014, p.31).
At the school level, principals have the responsibility for the day-to-day management of the educational institutions (IBE, 2010).

3.3 Overview of programmes 3.3.1 Early childhood education (ECE) services ECE centres normally provide services to children within the age range of 1-4 years27 (IBE, 2010).

ECE centres are categorized as daycare and preschools centres.
Daycare centres provide child care services to children aged 1-2 years while preschool centres normally has children of 3-4 years old in attendance and follow a structured curriculum prescribed by the early childhood unit of the MOE, Nonetheless, there are many day care centres which offer preschool services and vice versa.

In such cases, however, the distinction between the two programmes is not clear.

The number of centres varies, as new schools open and a few close down from year to year.
The academic year 2012/13 recorded 38 daycare centres, of which 21 were 27 However, there are some centres where the children are 5 years old, despite the fact the formal primary education commences at age 5.

Education 33 Government-owned, and 96 were preschool centres (Ministry of Education, 2013).
Table 3-1: Monitoring indicators: Early childhood education - MOE 2008/09-2012/13 Early childhood education monitoring indicators Access Year 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 Net enrolment rate (%) 28.3 34.4 38.4 43.3 42.4 Total enrolment Females (%) Number of early childhood centres Average size of ECEs Resources Qualified/trained practitioners (%) Child/practitioner ratio Source: Ministry of Education (2013), Authors’ calculations.
Table 3-1 presents combined monitoring indicators for ECE.

The table shows that the net enrolment for ECE rate has gone up from 28.3 per cent in 2008/09 to 42.4 per cent in 2012/13.

According to the National Social Protection Policy, there had been a general perception that early childhood development (ECD) services were not always accessible to children from deprived backgrounds (MoST, 2011).
While considerable efforts are being made by the Government of Saint Lucia to address this issue, financial constraints remain an obstacle for the expansion of inclusive services (Chitolie- Joseph, 2014, p.13).

3.3.2 Primary school services Student Support Services Unit The Student Support Services Unit of the Ministry of Education coordinates the provision of assistance in the form of bursaries and school feeding programmes to disadvantaged students in public primary schools.
The school feeding programme is in operation at 70 of the 75 public primary schools in Saint Lucia.

In 2012/13, 7,067 needy students 34 (42 per cent) of the public primary school students benefited from the school feeding programme (Ministry of Education, 2013).

Performance of primary school services Figure 3-1 (overleaf ) shows the (adjusted)28 net enrolment rates for primary education for 2000- 2012.

It clearly shows that primary education enrolment is decreasing.
From roughly 97 per cent in 2000, net enrolment has dropped to 82 per cent in 2012.

Although the enrolment rate remains acceptable the declining pattern requires attention, with special attention given to the gender dynamics if they apply in this case.

For example, in Saint Lucia girls could be performing better than boys (which is lost in the aggregate).
Additionally a more in-depth analysis of repetition patterns (see KPIs section below) and late start among students would shed more light on the situation.

28 The adjusted net enrolment is the number of pupils of the school-age group for primary education, enrolled either in primary or secondary education, expressed as a percentage of the total population in that age group.
BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA It must be noted that according to the statistics of the Ministry of Education, the net enrolment rate was 88 per cent in 2011/12 and 90 per cent in 2012/13.

It is unclear where this difference comes from.

The net enrolment rates for 2009/10 to 2012/13 are also indicated.

This table also shows that total enrolment has decreased in these years; from 19,287 to 16,764 students.
This also had its effect on the school size, which reduced from 248 students (2010/11) to 224 students (2012/13) on average per school29.

Figure 3-1: Enrolment rates primary education 2000-201 t n e c r e P 100 80 60 40 20 0 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Year Source: The World Bank (n.d.) Figure 3-2 compares the primary enrolment rate with countries in the region.
At 87.8 per cent in 2010, Saint Lucia is below the Latin American and Caribbean average of 94.4 and in the lower end of the region.

Sao Tome and Principe and Trinidad and Tobago score a healthy 98.7 per cent enrolment rate for primary education.
Figure 3-2: Adjusted net primary enrolment rates in the Caribbean, 201030 t n e c r e P 100 80 60 40 20 0 v is e d N n cia u S t. L y u G a n a S t. K itt s a n ti g A d n m i n ic a a u o D b lic u p e n R a o s d a a r b B m a h a B Country e h a s, T S t. V i n e c n n n t a G r e e d t h e s d i n a a T ri n i d n d a g m a b o d T o o T a S e ci p d P ri n o n e a Source: The World Bank (n.d.).

30 Note: 2010 numbers were used to allow for the best regional data availability.
The adjusted net enrolment is the number of pupils of the school-age group for primary education, enrolled either in primary or secondary education, expressed as a percentage of the total population in that age group.

29 This difference could be attributed to private schools – however it should be verified.
Education 35 Figure 3-3: Gender parity index for the adjusted net primary enrolment rate, 2011 t n e c r e P 1.15 1.10 1.05 1.00 0.95 0.90 0.85 Antigua and Barbuda Dominican Republic Barbados St. Lucia St. Kitts and Nevis Guyana St. Vincent and the Grenadines Country Source: The World Bank (n.d.).
Figure 3-4: Primary completion rate, 2010 (as a percentage) t n e c r e P 100 80 60 40 20 0 St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia Guyana Do minican Republic Baha m as, The St. Vincent and the Trinidad and Tobago Barbados Antigua and Barbuda Country Source: The World Bank (n.d.).

Note: 2010. numbers were used to allow for the best regional data availability.
Primary completion rate is the total number of new entrants in the last grade of primary education, regardless of age, expressed as percentage of the total population of the theoretical entrance age to the last grade of primary.

This indicator is also known as “gross intake rate to the last grade of primary.” The ratio can exceed 100per cent due to over-aged and under-aged children who enter primary school late/early and/or repeat grades.
36 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA About the same number of boys and girls were enrolled in primary school in Saint Lucia in 2011.

The gender parity index31 is therefore 1.00, which is average for the region, (see Figure 3-3).

Figure 3-4 shows the primary completion rates for 2010 for Saint Lucia and countries in the region.

Saint Lucia was, at 89.6 per cent, below the regional average completion rates in 2010.
Note that there is a discrepancy between the World Bank data and the numbers from the Ministry of Education: in 2010, according to the Ministry of Education, 95.1 per cent of students continued to secondary education.

In terms of gender disaggregation in the region, the existing disparities slightly favor the girls; for every 100 boys who finish elementary school, 102 girls finish.

This increases in secondary schools with a greater presence of women (UN, 2010).
Key performance indicators: Primary education Table 3-2 (opposite) shows key performance indicators for primary education in Saint Lucia.

The enrolment figures and the transition rate are positive.

A little under 95 per cent of students transition from primary to secondary school.

On average, about 2.5 per cent of students repeat a class per year.

Interestingly, only 35-40 per cent of the repeaters are female.

This means that males make up for about two thirds of the repeaters.
There is a high percentage of trained teachers working in primary education; roughly 90 per cent.

The computer/ student ratio has greatly improved over the last five years: from one computer per 19 students in 2009/10 to one computer per 9 students in 2012/13 (Ministry of Education, 2013).

The teacher to student ratio has decreased from 1:20 in 2009/10 to 1:17 in 2012/13.

This ratio is expected to increase, however, in coming years as the number of teaching positions will be reduced.
The 2013 Education Digest reports 987 teaching positions in primary education in 2012/13, of which only 671 are expected to be left in 2015/16, targeting an STR of 1:25 for grades K to 2, and 1:30 for grades 3 to 632.

This means that in three years’ time, there will be a total decrease in teaching positions of 252.

(Ministry of Education, 2013).

31 The ratio of female adjusted net enrolment rate for primary to the male adjusted net enrolment rate for primary.
It is calculated by dividing the female value for the indicator by the male value for the indicator.

A GPI equal to 1 indicates parity between females and males.

In general, a value less than 1 indicates disparity in favour of males and a value greater than 1 indicates disparity in favour of females.

32 As stated in the existing Collective Agreement between the SLTU and the MOE.
In order to reach this target by 2015, the ratio is estimated to linearly increase by 2.5 each year (Ministry of Education, 2013).
Education 37 Table 3-2: Key performance indicators primary education, Ministry of Education, 2008/09-2012/13 Primary education KPIs Enrolment Gross enrolment rate (%) Net enrolment rate (%) Enrolment total Female students (% of total) Net intake rate (%) Leavers, transition and repetition Dropout rate (% of total) Transition rate – primary to secondary (%) Total repetition rates (%) Female repeaters (%) Teachers Qualified teachers (% of total) Teacher-student ratio Teacher attendance rate (actual, %) Facilities and programmes Computer/student ratio Participation in school feeding programme (% of total) Beneficiaries from bursaries (% of total) Average school size (no.
of students) 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 Year 102.0 95.6 102.3 95.7 102.8 94.3 102.0 95.5 101.9 95.3 19,287 18,594 17,982 17,276 16,764 4933 69.0 6 93.9 2.3 35.0 90.3 1:20 89 -- 26.0 4.2 -- 49 68.0 6 93.7 2.5 41.0 88.5 1:19 91 49 62.7 3 95.1 2.4 34.7 49 76.1 2 93.6 2.2 37.9 87.12 89.08 1:18 90 1:17 92 01:19 01:16 01:15 37.0 5.0 248 38.3 5.0 240 39.9 8.4 230 48 79.9 -- 93.9 2.8 35.8 88.6 1:17 -- 1:9 42.0 8.1 224 Source: Authors’ own calculations based on Ministry of Education (2013).
Note: -- Data not available.

3.3.3 Secondary school services In Saint Lucia, the number of public secondary schools operating in the 2012/13 academic year was 23.

Two schools were privately owned and 13,706 students were enrolled in the public schools (Ministry of Education, 2013).

All secondary schools offer a full five-year programme.

The programmes followed in secondary school are wide-ranging, consisting of both the traditional academic as well as technical and vocational subjects (IBE, 2010).
33 Less than 50% doesn’t necessarily mean less enrolment, but perhaps that girls repeat less.

38 The course of study is based mainly on syllabi set by the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) (IBE, 2010).

Secondary education in Saint Lucia has become more common and an increasing percentage of secondary education.

In 2000, a little over 62 per cent of the students of the official secondary school age were actually enrolled in secondary school.
In 2012, this number had increased to 82.4 per cent (see Figure 3-5 overleaf ).

students follows Regarding gender disaggregation, a much larger number of females were enrolled at secondary schools prior to 2006/07.

This is because females in common entrance usually perform better examinations.
However, as of 2006/07, with USE, the BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA differences have become minimal as all students now have an opportunity to secondary education (Chitolie-Joseph, 2014).

In this regard, Saint Lucia scores relatively similar to other countries in the region; as Figure 3-6 indicates, with the Dominican Republic being an extreme outlier.
Figure 3-5: Net enrolment rates: Secondary education in Saint Lucia, 2000-2012 t n e c r e P 100 80 60 40 20 0 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Year Source: The World Bank (n.d.).

Note: Net secondary education enrolment is het ratio of children of the official secondary school age who are enrolled in secondary school to the population of the official secondary school age.
Figure 3-6: Net enrolment rate secondary, all programmes, 2010 t n e c r e P 100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Dominican Republic Bahamas, The St. Lucia Barbados St. Vincent and the Grenadines Antigua and Barbuda St. Kitts and Nevis Country Source: The World Bank (n.d.).

Note: 2010 numbers were used to allow for the best regional data availability.
Presented here is the ratio of children of the official secondary school age who are enrolled in secondary school to the population of the official secondary school age.

Education 39 Student support services In 2012/13, students at public secondary schools in Saint Lucia benefited from three welfare programmes provided by the Ministry of Education namely, the transportation subsidy programme, the textbook rental programme and the bursary programme.
Five per cent of students benefited from bursaries and 18 per cent from transportation subsidies.

The textbook rental programme is offered to students from Form 1 to Form 3 and in 2012/13, only 0.25 per cent of these students benefited from the programme (Ministry of Education, 2013).

In 2013, around 3,300 laptops were provided to students to aid them in their studies.
The laptops, which were set up with up to date technological standards and the school curriculum, were provided to the form 4 level secondary school students.

Ministry officials have indicated the intention to broaden the schools laptop programme to include students from the form 1 level (Bishop, 2013).

Secondary education performance Key performance indicators for secondary education in Table 3-3 show satisfactory enrolment rates.
Gross enrolment rates are close to 100 per cent, like most countries in the region and the net enrolment rate is in the range of 80-90 per cent during 2008/09 – 2012/13 (Tareq et al., 2010).

The computer/student ratio is improving fast; from 19 students to one computer, to 9 students to one computer.

The number of qualified teachers is quite low, but on the increase.

According to Tareq et al.

(2010), the current level is not sufficient to provide quality education.
Basic teacher training costs can be significant to the Government.

However, the continued hiring of untrained teachers is the main cause of insufficient teacher qualifications.

The teacher:student ratio decreased from 1:17 (2009/10) to 1:14 (2012/13) over the past few years and is low compared to international standards.

The STR is also substantially below the ratios of other ECCU countries (which are slightly above 20) and other small island economies (Tareq et al., 2010).
However, according to the Ministry of Education for 2013/14 to 2015/16, a total surplus of 217 teachers was expected, so as to make the teacher:student ratio 1:20 in 2015/16, as stated in the existing collective agreement between the SLTU and the MOE (2013).

The percentage of students who passed five Caribbean Secondary Examination Council (CSEC) subjects, including Mathematics and English34 was 44 per cent in 2008/09.

In 2012/13, this was only 26 per cent (see Table 3-3, under Education Quality).
While a closer look at the absolute numbers could provide some insight, the drop could mean that a significant number of students were unprepared for secondary education and that implies that a majority leaves secondary school without the basic competencies required for effective participation in the labour market.

The (ir)relevance of the education curricula was pointed out as one factor responsible for this.
For the poor, who are enrolled in an education programme, to education inadequate access services and a generally lower participation in education related activities was also highlighted as a probable determinant cause; resulting from inequitable distribution of resources (Kairi Consultants Ltd., 2011).

According to Tareq et al.

(2010), Saint Lucia’s exam results on the Caribbean Secondary Education (CSEC) examination are average Certificate compared to other ECCU countries.
34 Passing five subjects and a score of grade 1, 2 of 3 in Mathematics and English is required for admission to the Sir Arthur Lewis Community College (SALCC) Associate Degree.

For a Diploma, four subjects are required, in combination with a score of grade 1,2 of 3 in Mathematics and English.

For a Certificate, there are other requirements (see the SALCC website).
40 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Key performance indicators secondary education Table 3-3: Key performance indicators secondary education, Ministry of Education, 2008/09-2012/13 Secondary education KPIs Enrolment and dropouts Gross enrolment rate (%) Net enrolment rate (%) Enrolment total Female students (% total) Net intake rate (%) Education quality Students passing 5 CSEC subjects, including English and Maths (general & technical) (%) Students achieving grades 1, 2 or 3 in Mathematics (General Proficiency) (%) Dropout rate (% of total) Teachers Qualified teachers (% of total) Student:teacher ratio Female teachers (% of total) Teacher attendance rate (actual, %) Facilities and programmes Computer/student ratio Beneficiaries from school transportation (% of total) Beneficiaries from bursaries (% of total) Average school size (no.
of students) 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 Year 94.0 82.6 94.0 83.6 98.4 86.9 99.0 89.8 96.3 87.7 15,753 15,564 15,139 14,241 13,576 50 69.0 44.4 44.7 -- 59.0 1:17 -- 89 -- -- 2.0 -- 50 68.0 42.9 41.5 2 61.0 1:16 69 89 50 62.7 33.3 29.9 2 63.3 1:16 70 88 50 76.1 22.8 29.9 2 64.7 1:15 70 90 1:19 1:16 1:15 16 3.0 677 17 2.7 658 18 2.8 619 50 79.9 26.4 31.6 -- 68.0 1:14 71 -- 1:9 18 5.0 590 Source: Ministry of Education (2013), Authors’ calculations.
Note: -- Data not available 3.4 The education budget 3.4.1 Education financing For the financial year 2012/13, 211.6 million dollars were allocated to the Ministry for both recurrent and capital expenditure.

This represented 14.5 per cent of the national budget for 2012/13.
In 2012/13, public education expenditure as a percentage of GDP was 4.7 per cent, a slight increase of 0.1 percentage points from the previous year 2011/12, but far less than the 6.5 per cent Saint Lucia spent on education in 2009/10 (Tareq et al., 2010)35.

35 The 6.5 per cent was slightly above average in ECCU countries on public education and significantly exceeded the level of spending in OECD countries and Latin America and Caribbean region.
However, it was somewhat below that of other small island economies.

In per capita terms, spending was in line with other small island countries, but below the average of other ECCU countries (Tareq et al., 2010).

From 2005/06, the recurrent expenditures on education as a percentage of total Government recurrent expenditure has been less than 20 per cent.

In 2012/13, the trend continued with the percentage slightly decreasing from 18 per cent to 17.4 per cent.
For a regional comparison of the public expenditure on education, we turn to World Bank data.

Figure 3-7 shows the percentage of GDP spent on education for some regional countries for which data was available.

Saint Lucia was at 4.2 per cent in 2010, according to the World Bank (The World Bank, n.d.).

The average for Latin America and the Caribbean was not available.
Education 41 Figure 3-7: Public spending on education, 2010, (as a percentage of GDP) 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 t n e c r e P 7.51 6.35 5.08 4.18 3.66 Barbados Jamaica St. Vincent and the Grenadines Country St. Lucia Guyana Source: The World Bank (n.d.).

Note: 2010 numbers were used to allow for the best regional data availability.
The adjusted net enrolment is the number of students of the school-age group for primary education, enrolled either in primary or secondary education, expressed as a percentage of the total population in that age group.

of this report.

However, a different categorization is needed – one that aligns the budget into meaningful categories and makes an explicit distinction between administrative expenditures and programme expenditures.
Table 3-4 provides the conversion for both the administrative and the economic classification.

The amount of programmes and expenditure categories in the budget are reduced by combining different programmes or expenditure items.

For example, the newly introduced category of ‘salaries’ is an addition of ‘personal emoluments’, ‘wages’, ’travel and subsistence’ and ‘rewards, compensation and In the administrative classification, incentives’.
a newly ‘central introduced category called administration’ consists of the old categories ‘agency administration’ and ‘corporate planning’, ‘management ‘information information system’.

technology’ and It should be noted, however, that schools are allowed to generate their own revenue.

This can be done through fees and fundraising activities.

They also receive donations from corporate sponsors for special projects.
These amounts are small, however, compared to the funds the Ministry manages for the operation of the island’s schools (Office of the Director of Audit, 2012).

3.4.2 Methdology and data The Government of Saint Lucia’s budget estimates for the period 2009/10 – 2013/14, are used, whereas for 2012/13 the revised budget figures and for 2013/14 the estimates are used and for the earlier FYs the actual outturns are used.

The estimates comprise recurrent expenditures, capital expenditures and revenues.
The original estimates are broken down into detail in administrative and economic classifications, which is beyond the scope 42 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 3-4: Conversion Table MOE Administrative classification Economic classification Central administration Salaries Agency administration Corporate planning Information technology Plant and equipment Early childhood education Primary education School feeding programme Secondary education Tertiary education Personal emoluments Wages Travel and subsistence Rewards, compensation and incentives Training Goods and services Office and general expense Supplies and materials Tools and Instruments Technical, vocational edu, training & accreditation Utilities Nat’l enrichment & learning programme Operating and maintenance Special education Student welfare support Other School supervision Educational evaluation & assessment U. N. E. S. C. O. Library services Cultural development Human resource development Curriculum development Labour relations Professional and consultancy services Advertising Equipment Hire of equipment Communication Capital - equipment Office costs Rental of property Insurance Capital Other Miscellaneous Capital – programmes Grants and contributions Subsidies Public assistance Source: authors.
Notes: The categories in bold are the new categories.

Any categories below the bold items are combined into the bold category.

costs The capital expenditures were either categorized costs, office under (constructions rehabilitations, restorations, etc.

), equipment (medical equipment etc.)

or other costs (projects like the YEP and OECS Skills for Inclusive Growth the original Project.).

As much as possible, programmes were retained under which the capital expenditures were done.
By copying the numbers in the Government budget estimates and adding up different categories according to the conversion table the ‘new budget’ is constructed.

The numbers from this budget were transformed into ‘real’ numbers by correcting for inflation using 2012/13 as a base year, with inflation numbers from December each year.

This way, the expenditures from 2009 can be compared to the expenditures in 2014 and vice versa.
The inflation correction table that has been used can be found in the Annex (Table A-1).

The ‘new real budget’ is thus the starting point for the budget analysis.

Education 43 3.4.3 Budget and analysis A condensed version of our newly categorized, inflation corrected budget is presented in table 3-5.

The first five columns give the expenditure per program in 1,000 EC$ (constant 2012/13 prices).
The final column presents the total of the ministries’ budget that has been allocated to that programme in the years 2009-2014.

For example, 15.2 per cent of the total budget has been allocated to the central administration.

For the Ministry of Education, the biggest programmes are secondary education, primary education and the central administration, with 33, 29 and 15 per cent of the total budget going towards these programmes, respectively.
While this report focuses on children, it is worth mentioning that 8.4 per cent of the budget went to tertiary education in Saint Lucia between 2009 and 2013/14.

The following table also gives the expenditures for a number of social protection programmes like the OECS Skills for Inclusive Growth project, SMILES, YEP and NSDC.
Table 3-5: Condensed budget MOE, administrative classification, 2009-2014 (in 1,000 EC$, constant 2012/13 prices) Administrative classification 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Year % of MOE total Central administration 22,799 25,406 39,044 42,708 20,902 15.2% Early childhood education 2,423 2,330 2,288 2,745 2,363 1.2% Primary education Of which salaries School feeding programme 59,376 59,498 57,894 56,588 55,335 29.1% 56,487 1,681 56,158 54,455 1,816 2,029 52,660 1,995 51,702 1,917 27.1% 1.0% Secondary education 64,546 66,473 66,239 64,389 66,333 33.1% 57,978 59,191 58,093 56,193 58,134 28.9% Of which salaries Tertiary education Technical, vocational edu, training & accr.
Nat’l enrichment & learning Programme Special education Student welfare support 15,155 18,193 17,532 16,348 15,572 2,644 744 2,720 280 2,548 3,553 975 863 3,166 3,011 221 109 4,678 793 3,484 130 2,741 784 2,936 246 Other 16,896 19,294 11,274 17,267 18,261 Of which OECS skills programme 1,681 972 1,565 Of which SMILES programme Of which YEP programme Of which NSDC - - - Of which other programmes 3,057 - - 4,642 2,847 - - - 76 4,423 1,200 500 - 73 4,007 986 1,079 - 358 Remaining other costs in ‘other’ 12,158 10,833 9,633 11,071 11,832 Total 189,266 199,920 203,837 211,126 187,391 100.0% Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013), authors’ edit 44 8.4% 1.6% 0.4% 1.5% 0.1% 8.4% 1.3% 0.2% 0.2% 0.5% 0.6% 5.6% BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 3-6, shows the allocation in a more condensed form, but with a distinction between the recurrent and capital expenditures.
The latter makes up only 15 per cent of total expenditures, 85 per cent of expenditures are recurrent.

The large majority of capital expenditures was in administration, which makes up 77.3 per cent of capital expenditures.

In the recurrent expenditure, both primary and secondary education are major cost centres, as is to be expected.
Only 0.1 per cent of the budget goes to student welfare support, which holds programmes like the bursaries programme and the school transportation programme, while 1.5 per cent was spent on special education and tertiary education was allocated 8.4 per cent of the budget.

ECE receives only 1.2 per cent of total expenditure.
Table 3-6: Recurrent, capital and total expenditure of MOE, 2009-2014 (in 1,000 EC$, constant 2012/13 prices) Programme Recurrent expenditure (RE) ∑2009-2014 Capital expenditure (CE) ∑2009-2014 Total expenditure (TE) ∑2009-2014 In 1,000 EC$ % of RE In 1,000 EC$ % of CE In 1,000 EC$ % of TE Central administration 33,776 Early childhood education 12,150 Primary education 288,691 School feeding programme 9,080 Secondary education 327,375 Tertiary education Tech., voc, training & accr.
Nat’l enrichment & learning programme Special education 79,974 16,165 3,933 14,705 Student welfare support 986 53,258 Other Total 4.0% 1.4% 34.4% 1.1% 39.0% 9.5% 1.9% 0.5% 1.8% 0.1% 6.3% 117,083 77.3% 150,859 - - 359 606 2,826 - 225 612 - Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013), authors’ own calculations Dividing the budget according to an economic classification, as in table 3-7 (overleaf ), it appears that roughly two thirds (66.3 per cent) of the total budget is allocated to salaries.
Interestingly, this number is almost double compared to the Ministry of Health, for example, where 32.6 per cent goes to salaries.

Primary and secondary education account for the largest share of these salary costs while 10.3 per cent of the budget is allocated to grants and contributions with the Ministry spent 1.3 per cent on training.

This concurs with what Tareq et al.


(2010), concluded in their report, namely that salary expenditures in primary and secondary education are crowding out other expenditures on other important inputs, such as supplies and materials, operating and maintenance services, and teacher training (2010).

Moreover, according to this report an under- provision of these inputs can have a detrimental impact on the quality of education.
Education 45 Table 3-7: Condensed budget MOE economic classification, 2009-2014 (in constant 2012/13 prices and 1,000 EC$) Classification item Salaries Training Goods and services Equipment Office costs Other Grants and contributions Subsidies Public assistance 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Year Total 2009-2014 129,911 133,531 129,951 126,868 127,385 65.3% 1,739 7,812 2,884 11,261 9,994 22,076 3,591 - 2,412 9,794 5,285 10,782 14,594 19,645 3,877 - 2,695 9,781 11,615 8,456 17,027 20,146 4,165 - 3,541 11,095 14,222 8,481 22,418 20,584 3,916 - 2,820 10,661 6,874 861 14,920 19,873 3,996 - 1.3% 5.0% 4.1% 4.0% 8.0% 10.3% 2.0% 0.0% Total 189,266 199,920 203,837 211,126 187,391 100.0% Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013), authors own calculations Table 3-8 shows that the cost of salaries has been relatively stable over the years, when calculated on a per staff basis.
The average expenditure per worker ranges from roughly 48,000 EC$ to 50,000 EC$.

The total number of staff positions also remained relatively stable.

In primary education, the total number of staff was significantly reduced in 2009/10 – 2010/11 and in 2012/13 - 2013/14, by 52 and 56 teachers, respectively.

Table 3-8: Salary expenditures MOE, 2009-2014 (in EC$1,000, constant 2012/13 prices) Year Salaries Total salary expenditure (EC$) Total no.
of staff Of which primary education Of which secondary education Total expenditure / total no.

of staff (EC$) 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 129,911,077 133,531,176 129,951,178 126,868,131 127,385,447 2,652 1,195 1,213 2,647 1,143 1,230 2,722 1,143 1,276 2,613 1,152 1,159 2,562 1,094 1,182 48,986 50,446 47,741 48,553 49,721 Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013), authors own calculations.

Note: Salary costs include wages, personal emoluments, travel and subsistence etc.
The staff numbers are only representative for the total number of staff in service of the ministry.

Contracted people are not accounted for.

Therefore, the average payment might not give a representative number.

46 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA The expenditure per student has been rising since 2009/10 for both primary and secondary education (see table 3-9.

For primary education, expenditure increased from 3,079 EC$ per student in 2009/10 to 3,301 EC$ in 2012/13.
For secondary education, the expenditure per student increased at a faster pace from 4,097 EC$ to 4,875 EC$ (all in constant EC$).
Table 3-9: Expenditure per student, 2009-2014 (in 1,000 EC$, constant 2012/13 prices) Expenditure per student 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Year Expenditure primary education (EC$) 59,376 59,498 57,894 56,588 55,335 Students primary education Expenditure per student (primary) Expenditure secondary education (EC$) Enrolment secondary education Expenditure per student (secondary) 19,287 3,079 64,546 15,753 18,594 3,200 66,473 15,564 17,982 3,220 66,239 15,139 17,276 3,276 64,389 14,241 16,764 3,301 66,333 13,576 4,097 4,271 4,362 4,504 4,875 Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013), authors own calculation.
Note: With expenditures on primary education, the school feeding programme is excluded.

Figure 3-8: Allocation of expenditure for the central administration, 2013/14 3.4.4 Allocation per programme For the biggest programmes under the MOE, the economic allocation per program is presented below.

Figure 3-8 shows the allocation to the central administration for 2013/14.

The largest cost centre is ‘other costs’.


As indicated, most of the central agencies’ administration costs are capital expenditures, as this programme houses a number of large capital programmes36.

Equipment is also a major cost, but this also includes a number of capital expenditures37.

Nineteen per cent of the central administration’s costs are salaries, while 9 per cent is spent on goods and services.
36 The capital programmes include, among others, curriculum support , education access fund, the national literacy survey, OECS skills for inclusive growth project, the feasibility study for the conversion of a secondary school into a technical institute and Basic Education Enhancement Project (BEEP).

37 The capital programmes include, among others, the Expansion of Learning Spaces to Support USE (V-Fort Technical Secondary), a number of ICT projects and school furniture fittings & equipment.
Salaries Equipment Grants and contributions Office Costs Goods and services Other Source: GOSL (2013); authors own calculations Education 47 For primary education, the breakdown is less complicated; 94 per cent is allocated to salaries and 6 per cent to goods and services.

All other categories are marginal.

Figure 3-9 shows the breakdown38.


Figure 3-9: Allocation of expenditure in primary education, 2013/14 Figure 3-10: Allocation of expenditure in secondary education, 2013/14 Salaries Goods and services Source: GOSL (2013); authors calculations Salaries Goods and services Office costs Subsidies Source: GOSL (2013); authors calculations.

The figure for secondary education (3-10) also shows a large share of salary costs, albeit less than that for primary education.
Here, 87 per cent of the funds are going towards salaries, 6 per cent towards subsidies and 5 per cent to goods and services.

Grants and contributions consumes the last 2 per cent.

Other categories are marginal.

3.4.5 Spending execution Table 3-10 shows the budget process and the extent to which the actual expenditures are in line with the revised budget.

For this comparison, figures from 2008/09 to 2011/12 are available from the Government budget estimates.
It appears that in 2008, 2009 and 2010, the budget was exceeded.

In 2008/09, the budget was overstepped by 0.3 per cent, in 2009/2010 by 1.3 and in 2010/2011 by 0.3 per cent, respectively.

In 2011/12, the Ministry spent 2.7 per cent less than budgeted.

On average, the actual expenditure was 0.2 per cent less than budgeted.

Interestingly, only the school feeding programme exceeded the budgeted expenditure by more than 10 per cent in one year.
And over the total period, that programme spent 3.6 per cent less than budgeted.

All other programmes were always below that threshold.

Looking at the programmes individually, it appears that the biggest part of the total absolute exceeding costs come from primary education, exceeding the budget by 5.2 million EC$ taken as a total over the years for which the numbers are available.
38 Other programmes such as school feeding and various projects are not included under primary education even though they may target primary education 48 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 3-10: Deviation of expenditure from revised budget (recurrent), 2008/09-2011/12 Programme 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 Year Administration Early childhood education Primary education 2.4% -3.2% 2.4% School feeding programme 20.9% Secondary education Tertiary education 0.3% 0.0% Technical, vocational training -32.0% -4.4% -1.6% 2.5% -8.9% 3.7% -8.1% -0.9% -3.0% -1.8% 4.6% -9.9% 1.5% 0.0% -11.5% -6.9% -5.1% 0.6% -16.5% -2.4% 0.0% -9.6% Nat’l enrich.
& learning programme.
-8.0% -5.0% 1.4% 1.8% Special education -6.8% -0.9% -7.5% -13.2% Student welfare support -46.1% -33.8% -44.4% -50.5% Other Total -3.0% 0.3% 5.0% 1.3% -15.9% -13.2% 0.3% -2.7% In EC$ of Revised Budget 437,608 1,989,379 434,827 -4,477,551 Average deviation (in EC$) -190,529 -62,956 1,299,636 -104,995 388,276 -300,000 -287,969 -15,229 -204,551 -184,309 -741,309 -403,934 Total deviation (in %) -3.0% -2.9% 2.5% -3.6% 0.8% -2.0% -13.5% -2.4% -7.1% -43.7% -6.8% -0.2% -0.2% Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013), Authors’ calculations.
Note: Positive deviations (thereby exceeding the revised budget) of more than 10 per cent are highlighted in blue.
3.5 Education benefit incidence analysis “Public policy in general and public expenditures decisions in particular, must be based on a sound understanding of the needs and preferences of the population at large.” (Analysing the Incidence of Public Spending, Demery 2003) The benefit incidence analysis allows us to explore how public spending for education is distributed across the St Lucian population and who benefits most from it.
Employing an established method for benefit incidence analysis (Demery, 2003), the MICS4 is used to assess the distribution of public spending for education in St Lucia across wealth quintiles as well as across different demographic groups.

In order to achieve this, the average cost per student at each level of education is first calculated.
For the purpose of this analysis, the expenditures data for different levels of education as calculated for the financial assessment, current prices for 2012/13 is used.

Subsequently, enrolment figures reported in the latest Education Digest for 2012/13, are drawn upon.

Then, by using the household survey as a basis for identifying wealth distribution (through the wealth index), the average cost per student is imputed for each education level to the individuals that report to attend school at that level.
This allows the simulation of the distribution of public spending for education and to chart it against wealth distribution as well as to break it down per geographic area, gender, and other personal or household characteristics.

In 2012/13, the public expenditures for ECE, primary, secondary and tertiary education altogether amounted to around 140 million EC$, which is about two-thirds of total MOE expenditures.
Among the amounts for different levels of education, the amount allocated to secondary education is the biggest (see figure 3-11 overleaf ).

Education 49 Figure 3-11: Education expenditures by level of education, 2012/13 Share in total expenditures of MOE Share in total expenditures for schools 30% 27% 2% 12% 40% 46% 1% Early Childhood Ediucation 8% Primary Education Secondary Education Tertiary Education 35% 30% 25% 20% 15% 10% 5% 0% Source: Expenditures data provided by the Ministry of Education.
Note: The expenditures figures are in 2012/13 prices.

Looking at the average spending per student in table 3-11, it is obvious that the higher the educational level, the larger the cost per student.

The average spending per student in ECE is 562 EC$ while the amount spent per person in tertiary education is 6854 EC$, which is more than10 times higher.
Table 3-11: Expenditures per student for pre-school, primary, secondary and tertiary education, 2012/13 Level of education Expenditures (in EC$) Number of enrolled students Average cost per student (in EC$) Early childhood education 2,745,236 4,882 562 Primary education 56,587,892 16,764 3,376 Secondary education 64,388,974 13,576 4,743 Tertiary education 16,347,800 2,385 6,854 Source: Expenditures data provided by the Ministry of Education and school enrolment information from the Education Digest.
Note: The expenditures figures are in 2012/13 prices.

Table 3-12 depicts the distribution of students over wealth quintiles.

The children attending pre-school and primary school are slightly more concentrated in the bottom quintiles.

In secondary school, the share of students in the poorest quintile gets smaller while increasing in the richest quintile.
Most of the students attending post-secondary or tertiary education are found in the richer quintiles, with 34.9 per cent belonging to the richest quintile and only 3.5 per cent to the poorest quintile.
50 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 3-12: Distribution of students by wealth quintiles, as a percentage of all students attending a particular level of education Wealth quintiles Pre-school Primary school Secondary school Post- secondary/ tertiary Poorest Second Middle Fourth Richest Total 22.14 25.80 19.49 3.45 26.28 17.09 16.25 18.24 19.25 23.38 15.02 19.31 17.64 19.12 16.98 19.27 27.44 18.67 20.23 100 100 100 34.97 100 Source: Authors’ own calculation based on the MICS4 survey from 2012.
Figure 3-13 shows the distribution of students by gender revealing an interesting pattern.

While there are no gender disparities in the distribution until primary school, this starts to change, with females representing a lower percentage than males in secondary education, which switches to almost 25 per cent more for post-secondary education.

More in depth analysis needs to be done to better understand these patterns which could be attributed to repetition rates by males for example.
Figure 3-13: Distribution of students by gender, for each level of education 50% 50% 51% 49% 55% 45% 62% 38% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% Pre-school Primary Secondary Post- secondary Male Female Source: Authors’ own calculation based on the MICS4 survey from 2012.

There is a variation between the % of Secondary enrolment compared to the earlier mentioned KPI – This number is calculates from the MICS4 Data, and shows female secondary enrolment at 5% points lower.
The distribution of expenditures by wealth quintiles follows the pattern of distribution of beneficiaries.

A slightly bigger share of the expenditures for education are allocated to the richest quintile (22 per cent) than to the poorest quintile (20 per cent).
The middle quintile receives the smallest share of the education expenditures, 18 per cent (see Table 3-13) Education 51 Table 3-13: Total expenditures for schooling by education level and wealth quintile Wealth quintiles Pre- school Primary school Secondary school Post- secondary/ tertiary Total Total share Poorest Second Middle Fourth Richest Total Source: Authors’ calculation based on the MICS4 from 2012.
Note: The expenditure amounts in this table are derived from the representative MICS data-set and are therefore an approximation of the actual expenditures shown in table 6-2.

By disaggregating the amount of total expenditure by gender it appears that girls and boys receive almost equal amounts of the total expenditure as can be seen in Table 3-14.
It is important to point out here, however, that this does not necessarily address gender equity, and is not taking the into differences account in determining their needs.

It is, however, a noteworthy decomposition to reflect on.
in girls’ and boys’ situations Table 3-15: Total spending for education in urban and rural areas, MICS Area Total Urban Rural Total 24,628,776 111,827,490 136,456,266 % 18.0% 82.0% 100% With regards to urban and rural populations, the biggest percentage goes to the rural areas, which is logical as it corresponds to the population shares.

Source: Authors’ calculation based on the MICS4 from 2012.
Note: The expenditure amounts in this table are derived from the representative MICS4 data-set and are therefore an approximation of the actual expenditures.

Table 3-14: Total spending for education for boys and girls, MICS Gender Total Male 69,510,540 Female 66,945,720 % 51% 49% Total 136,456,260 100% Source: Authors’ calculation based on the MICS4 from 2012.
Note: The expenditure amounts in this table are derived from the representative MICS data-set and are therefore an approximation of the actual expenditures.

Discussion 3.6 Public expenditure in education provides a measure of the Government’s commitment to education.

Examining how the government in Saint Lucia invests in education provides important context for assessing education outcomes.
While investment in education can be influenced by supply and demand factors such as demographic structure, enrolment rates, and costs of educational resources, a better understanding of the budget and how actual spending on children is carried out will assist in improving the overall expenditure process to make way for improved outcomes.

Following the analysis in this chapter, the following points stand out as issues that require further investigation and scrutiny.
52 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Under-investment in early childhood development The early years of childhood form the basis of intelligence, personality, social behaviour, and capacity to learn and nurture oneself as an adult.

There is significant evidence linking the circumstances of adversity and habits formed in early years to the non-communicable diseases of adulthood (UNICEF 2014).
The earlier an investment is made in the development of a child, the higher the rate of return.

Efforts should focus on the first years for the greatest efficiency and effectiveness (Heckman, 2012).

The average spending per student in ECE in Saint Lucia is 562 EC$ while the amount spent per person in tertiary education is 6854 EC$ - more than 10 times higher.

ECE receives a little over 1 per cent of total expenditure.

This is obviously a considerably low percentage.


Including early childhood interventions in larger programmes can enhance the programmes’ efficacy.

Early childhood interventions in in education programmes prepare children for school, improving their performance and reducing the need for repetition.

Increased investment in ECD would not only have an enormous impact on children but would address inequality and influence the development trajectory of countries.
The dilemma of quality of education and salaries of teachers Over the last three decades substantial investment has been made to expand educational opportunities in Saint Lucia.

However, it is recognised that there are problems to be addressed when quality is in question.

This is evident from the large numbers leaving the educational system without having achieved basic levels in the programmes in which they might have participated.
Data from the labour force survey show that over 61 per cent of the population 15 years of age and over, do not have certificates above primary level education.

The current educational plan recognises the challenge and has, as one of its objectives, the enhancement of quality of education, “so that students can master the essential foundations for lifelong education” (Kairi Consultants Ltd., 2011).

This is easier said than done, however, and two issues arise.
The first issue is that of salaries and the second is that of having quality teachers with a reasonable teacher:student ratio.

As was presented in this chapter, roughly two thirds of the total budget of MOE is allocated to salaries (a number almost double that compared to MOH) with the largest share going to primary and secondary education.

On the other hand, the issue of the quality of teachers seems to be a permanent one.
In primary education, which has a high percentage of trained teachers, the number of teaching positions in the coming 3 years is expected to decrease changing the current teacher:student ratio from 1:17 to 1:25 for the first 3 grades, and 1:30 for the consecutive 3 grades.

As for s education, the number of qualified teachers is quite low, and while the number of teachers is expected to increase, this is not sufficient in isolation of properly trained teachers.
Here it becomes necessary to realise that general teacher training costs can be significant to the government, which can only be harvested in the long-term.

However, the continued hiring of untrained teachers is the main cause of insufficient teacher qualifications.
Additionally, it is necessary to keep in mind that a critical factor in the capacity of a country to achieve competitiveness in a variety of sectors, such as the export oriented sector, is the quality of the labour force and the depth and breadth of its educational stock.

Gender disparities While gender disparity between girls and boys on the primary level is not very evident, the scenario changes when they move to secondary school.
Firstly, there are 10 per cent more boys attending secondary schools than girls.

However the pattern changes when the actual achievement is observed.

One example is the issue of class repetition, which on average makes up about 2.5 per cent of students and where males actually make up about two- thirds of the repeaters.

Additionally, girls are almost 25 per cent more likely to go on to post-secondary education.
This disparity in the underachievement of boys should be better understood, especially in regard to the fact that the total spending on education between girls and boys is very similar.

According to the OECS Education Sector Strategy in performance are (OESS), gender disparities evident at all levels of the school system and there is Education 53 actually a declining participation of boys and males at the upper secondary and tertiary levels (OECS, 2011).
Another point relating to gender stereotyping that continues to be addressed, is evident in the Curriculum and Materials Development Unit (CAMDU) changing the terminology used in its texts to include a greater degree of gender sensitivity; by reversing sex role stereotyping in the characters portrayed.
This is aimed at combating discrimination against women and girls at an early age Demographic disparities As the education level advances, it can be observed that the share of students who belong to the poorest quintile gets smaller while getting larger in the richest quintile.

While this reflects the drop in the distribution of students in the lower quintiles, this is a pattern that must be further investigated, and the possibility that there are budget implications related to it should be explored.
Salaries crowding out other expenditures An education system that aims to offer a quality education for all young people should be able to count on teachers who are not only well trained but also adequately paid.

As mentioned previously, the public sector is the main provider of education services in Saint Lucia.

As was shown, two thirds (66.3 per cent) of the total budget is allocated to salaries.

Interestingly, this number is almost double than that compared to the MOH.
Primary and secondary education account for the largest share of these salary costs, 10.3 per cent of the budget is allocated to grants and contributions and the Ministry spend 1.3 per cent on training.
This is understandable since the biggest programmes for the ministry are secondary and primary education (in the recurrent expenditure, both primary and secondary education are major cost centres), but this also means that with such large portions going to salaries, little is left to work with on other important facets of the education system.
For example, only 0.1 per cent of the budget went to student welfare support, which holds programmes like the bursaries programme and the school transportation programme, and only 1.5 per cent was spent on special education.

This poses a challenge for the budgeting exercise for Saint Lucia, because the question is not just about raising expenditure.

It is clear that the expenditure per student has been rising since 2009/10 for both primary and secondary education.
Additionally, it appears that in 2008, 2009 and 2010, the budget was exceeded, with the biggest part of the total absolute exceeding costs coming from primary education.

54 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA 4 Social Protection in Introduction 4.1 Various social protection schemes and programmes exist in Saint Lucia, using a range of different mechanisms.
While some of these programmes are embedded long-term strategic plans, implemented nationwide and financed through the central government’s consolidated budget, few are anchored in law, and quite a few are of a short-term nature, or limited in geographical and categorical coverage, and based on a volatile and insecure resource base.

The various programmes use different mechanisms to deliver the income transfer or service to different population groups.
The following categories may be distinguished: •• transfer programmes directed cash households or individuals to •• in-kind transfers to households or individuals aiming at facilitating access to social services, for example in health and education •• active labour market programmes © UNICEF/ECA/(2015/Marcille Haynes) This chapter begins with a general overview of the social protection landscape in Saint Lucia, and then goes more in-depth, examining these various programmes, looking into their objectives and target groups, their overlaps and/or gaps, and their funding through the budgets of three Ministries39.
From there, the budget of the Ministry of Social Transformation (MOST) will be analyzed, as well as the budget of its main implementing arm in the field of social protection programmes, the Saint Lucia Social Development Fund (SSDF).

The programmes examined will be clustered into three areas: programmes for children, active labour market programmes (for the working age population), and cash transfer programmes and other services targeting households.
Meaningful performance indicators with respect to these programmes will be introduced, with a view to their objectives and target groups and their gender responsiveness.

The chapter will conclude with some recommendations and issues for further discussion.

•• subsidies – either to producers or consumers of certain goods or services 39 Earlier Chapters have looked into the budgets of the Ministries of Education (Chapter 6) and (to a lesser extent) Health (Chapter 5).
Social Protection 55 4.2 Policies and planning 4.2.1 The National Strategic Framework: the NSPP The Government of Saint Lucia has embarked on a National Social Protection Policy (NSPP) aiming to streamline existing social protection interventions to avoid duplication and overlapping, enhance institutional capacities, coordinate mechanisms and address problems of operational weaknesses in programming and implementation.
It also aims to encompass more efficient targeting mechanisms to increase the pro-poor focus of the various programmes (MOSTLG 2013).

The objective is to bring the multitude of social protection programmes under one umbrella, based on a coherent framework and programmatic approach, and embedded in legislation.
The NSPP subscribes the objective of building a national social protection floor as a fundamental element of the social protection system, in line with the ILO Social Protection Floors Recommendation, 2012 (No.

202).

The implementation of the NSPP is a long-term venture.

For the period up to 2017, ambitions are to consolidate and strengthen existing social protection programmes with a view to rendering them more effective and efficient.
For the period 2017 to 2021, the aim is to implement wider reforms with a view to establish a coherent and integrated social protection framework.

For this second phase, the focus will also be more on building social insurance schemes (health insurance, pension and unemployment insurance).
Hence, the orientation in the first phase looks at horizontal expansion and rationalization of existing programmes, establishing a social protection floor tailored to the poorest and most vulnerable, whereas in the second phase the orientation is more towards vertical expansion, deepening and extending coverage in terms of social insurance vehicles.

Overview of the programmes 4.3 Saint Lucia operates several programmes with social protection characteristics and objectives.
There is one genuine cash transfer programme (public assistance) and a fairly large number of programmes combining cash transfers with skills enhancement 56 (productivity enhancement) or empowerment (social inclusion) measures.

Most programmes are targeting adult Saint Lucians or households.

These programmes – cash transfers and services for Saint Lucians of working age – are described in the first part of this section.
The MOE operates several programmes that target poor and vulnerable children with an objective to facilitate universal access to education (FCUBE).

These programmes will also be included in this section.

These programmes will be examined in three separate clusters: (i) social protection programmes for children, (ii) active labour market programmes (for the working age population), and (iii) ‘passive’ cash transfer programmes and other services in the area of social protection.
The purpose of clustering the programmes is to determine whether there are overlaps between them in terms of objectives and target population.

This section will take these clusters in a reverse sequence and start with the cash transfer and social services programmes, since these are considered to be the backbone of any social protection system and of crucial importance for poor and vulnerable families with children.
The active labour market programmes are important with a view to the labour market perspectives of adolescents and young adults in Saint Lucia suffering from high youth unemployment.

Figure 4-1 provides an overview of social protection programmes and the MDAs responsible.

The darker blue programmes target children, the lighter blue ones are ‘passive’ social protection programmes that target poor and vulnerable households – including families with children and single mothers.
The green coloured programmes are active labour market programmes.

There is one social protection programme targeting the elderly Saint Lucians, the senior citizen’s home.

This, as one would expect in a report that discusses budgeting for children, will not be considered in further detail.

One can see from the figure that the governance situation with respect to social protection in Saint Lucia is rather complex.
Quite a few ministries are involved, various implementing agencies and a vast range of programmes exist.
BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Figure 4-1: Overview of social protection programmes Level 1: Ministries Office of the PM Ministry of Education Ministry of Labour Ministry of Social Transformation Ministry of Agriculture Ministry of Health Other Ministries Level 2: Administering Agencies NICE SSDF Level 3: Programmes for children: School Feeding Bursaries After School School Transportation BTC for working age population: ALMPs JOBS (NAPP, CPIP, SBTAB) Public Assistance KSL HOPE YAEP NELP NSDC (OECS Skills, SMILES, YEP) BEL Fund STEP BNTF SSDF Other Human Services (Transit Home) Human Services (Upton Gardens Girls Home) Human Services (Foster care) CDP Gender Division (WSC) Human Services (Family and Child Care) Human Services (Senior Citizens for elderly: Source: Authors’ compilation 4.3.1 Cash transfer programmes The public assistance programme The public assistance programme (PAP) is a cash- transfer programme aimed at targeting the poorest households.
The legislative title for these public assistance benefits is the Public Assistance Act.

The programme’s main objective is poverty alleviation.

4.3.2 Programmes that combine cash transfers and non-cash transfers The Saint Lucia Social Development Fund (SSDF) implements various programmes that have a cash transfer component but that also provide in- kind support to families.
These are the Koudmen Sent Lici (translated from the Patois language as ‘Self-help Saint Lucia’) and the Basic Needs Trust Fund, HOPE and STEP.

This sub section will focus on the Koudmen programme, the latter three are described under the subsequent subsection 4.3.3: Active labour market programmes.

The second programme discussed here is the James Belgrave Micro Enterprise Development Fund Inc. (BELfund) which offers micro-credit and support to poor and vulnerable households.
referrals in-kind and Koudmen Sent Lici The Koudmen Sent Lisi (KSL) programme aims to address the multidimensional needs of impoverished households, through cash transfers, to alternative services programmes.

The overall objective of the programme is to improve living conditions and develop opportunities in poor communities and vulnerable households through the establishment of a targeted programme of support designed to transform household units.
The programme has no legal title, and targets indigent households island- wide.

Towards the end of 2014, 100 households have been enrolled in the programme, 496 individuals, including 262 children under the age of 15.
Social Protection 57 Inc. (BELfund) was established James Belgrave Micro Enterprise Development Fund Inc. (BELfund) The James Belgrave Micro Enterprise Development Fund in 2000 with the objective of empowering the poor, the unemployed micro-entrepreneurs and other under privileged persons aged 18 and over.
More specific objectives of the programme are to enable micro enterprise projects for individuals, families and groups among the less privileged sectors through the provision of low cost loans, enterprise training, technical assistance and other support services and encourage small-scale enterprise projects.

Analysis of objectives and covered population of cash transfers and other services in Saint Lucia Table 4-1 shows the number of beneficiaries of the programmes.
The PAP programmes has the most beneficiaries, followed by the individuals SSDF and the Family and Child Care, which swapped its between 2nd and 3rd largest since 2013.

Table 4-2 shows the female share among the beneficiaries, and shows that the share of women beneficiaries exceeds 50 per cent for all the programmes.

In terms of the relevant age group (age 15-64), it can be observed from Table 4-3 that the programmes do not cover more than a small proportion of the mentioned population.
Table 4-1: Number of cash transfer programmes’ beneficiaries Beneficiaries 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (Cash transfers and services) PAP (households) PAP# (age<20) - - 2,752 2,514 2,498 SSDF (Koudmen Sent Lisi, households) - - 100 - SSDF (Koudmen Sent Lisi) - individuals, working age SSDF (Koudmen Sent Lisi) - boys, age <20 SSDF (Koudmen Sent Lisi) - girls, age <20 314 165 160 Belfund 50 64 56 62 57 Women’s support centre - MOST gender division 19 20 19 15 15 Family and child care - Human Services 540 289 396 558 103 #: no information on ages of individual beneficiaries was available Source: calculated on the basis of information received from programme administrations Table 4-2: Female share among cash transfer programmes’ beneficiaries Female beneficiaries (as a percentage of all) 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (Cash transfers and services) PAP (households) SSDF (Koudmen Sent Lisi) - individuals, working age SSDF (Koudmen Sent Lisi) - individuals, <20 51.0 49.0 Belfund 40.0 60.9 55.4 51.6 59.6 Women’s support centre - MOST gender division 100.0 Family and child care - human services 54.8 62.3 59.8 57.7 68.9 Source: Calculated on the basis of information received from programme administrations 58 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 4-3: Cash transfers and services’ beneficiaries share (15-65 age group) Beneficiaries as a percentage of all in the relevant age group 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (Cash Transfers and Services) PAP (households) SSDF (Koudmen Sent Lisi) 0.09 0.09 Belfund 0.05 0.06 0,05 0,05 0.05 Women’s support centre - MOST gender division 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.01 0.01 Family and child care - human services 0.49 0.26 0.35 0.48 0.09 Source: Calculated on the basis of information received from programme administrations 4.3.3 Active labour market programmes (ALMPs) Active Labour Market Programmes (ALMPs) help unemployed people find work through a combination of cash and in kind benefits such as job placement services and human capital generating programmes including vocational education, skills training, and (sometimes) job creation.
The objective of these programmes is twofold: (i) at the macro level, to improve the functioning of the labour market as a market, and, (ii) at the individual level, to enhance employability or provide job opportunities (an entry point to the labour market) for people of an active age that are unemployed or underemployed.

Saint Lucia operates several of these programmes.

Programmes such as the BNTF, HOPE and STEP are administered through SSDF with a substantial activation component.
This subsection will further cover these and several other programmes, administered under the NICE office and the Ministry of Education with similar objectives.

Analysis of objectives and covered population of ALMPs in Saint Lucia Table 4-4 (overleaf ) summarizes the objectives, target groups and activities of the various ALMPs in Saint Lucia.

Apparent from the table is the big overlaps between all these programmes in terms of their targeted population, objectives, and instruments.
For example, NAPP and OECS skills target (vulnerable) youth, whereas HOPE and NSDC also target the at risk youth.

SMILES targets deprived single mothers, but BNTF and NSDC also list teenage mothers among their target groups.

less than six programmes mention skills No enhancements among their objectives, and five are providing training activities, plus another four programmes provide subsidized jobs.
This points to what has been described as one of the major problems with social protection in Saint Lucia, where a large number of programmes are doing similar things with no coordination between them.

One of the main reasons behind this is that in the run-up to, or after general elections, when there is a change of cabinet, new programmes tend to be introduced even when these replicate existing ones to a significant extent.

Old programmes continue to exist even when their funding may be reduced.
Social Protection 59 Table 4-4: Summary of ALMPs in Saint Lucia Target groups Objectives SSDF NICE Instruments applied HOPE Youth (general) Disadvantaged youth Females Un-/semi skilled Sectors Skills enhancement Experience Job matching Labour demand Poverty alleviation Facilitate (loans etc.)

 Other (crime prevention, etc.)
/ s e i t i v i t c A s l o o t Information Training Subsidized jobs Source: Authors’compilation STEP NAPP CPIP NSCD SMILES OECS Skills NELP YEDF YAEP The number of the different programmes’ beneficiaries is shown Table 4-5.

It is evident that these programmes are relatively large in terms of their coverage.

NICE, for example, in 2012 provided training and counselling services to more than 3,000 individuals.
Compared to the total number of Saint Lucians in the age group up to 35 years who, according to Labour Force Survey statistics, are counted as unemployed – importantly the latter is just under 14,000 in 2013 – this is a sizable number.
Moreover, if we would sum all beneficiaries in the various ALMPs – combining 2012/13 and 2013/14, since no statistics are available for all programmes for either of these years – and we would for a moment assume that there are no double counts, then this would lead to a staggering figure of more than 14,000 participants.
To put this into perspective, this would mean that the current programmes could absorb the entire population registered under youth unemployment, provided these programmes would target (as most of them claim) the out-of-job youth up to the age of 35, and provided there would be no ‘double dipping’ and no errors of exclusion nor inclusion.
60 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 4-5: Number of reported ALMPs beneficiaries Beneficiaries 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (ALMPs) NICE/JOBS (NAPP, CPIP, SBTAP) - - - 2,970 1,503 STEP SMILES - - - - 7,514 - - - - 214 SSDF (HOPE) 681 1,171 714 611 509 SSDF (BNTF) (number of households) - - - - - NELP NSDC OECS YAEP 1,598 1,250 1,616 1,425 - 270 1,020 1,117 552 - - 102 139 868 - - - - - - Source: Calculated on the basis of information received from programme administrations Table 4-6 indicates that the share of women beneficiaries exceeds 50 per cent for all the programmes, and tends to range between two third or even three quarters of the total beneficiaries.
In terms of the relevant age group (age 15-64) the combination of these programmes (NICE and STEP) cover a significant proportion of the population, as can be seen in Table 4-7 (overleaf ).
Table 4-6: Female share among ALMPs beneficiaries Female beneficiaries (as a percentage of all) 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (ALMPs) NICE/JOBS (NAPP, CPIP, SBTAP) STEP SMILES SSDF (HOPE) SSDF (BNTF) NELP NSDC OECS YAEP 71.0 68.1 100.0 71.5 78.7 73.4 75.1 74.3 73.9 76.7 77.5 73.1 72.3 64.7 72.2 64.2 65.4 54.0 81.4 77.0 69.7 Source: Calculated on the basis of information received from programme administrations Social Protection 61 Table 4-7: ALMPs’ beneficiaries share (15-65) age group Beneficiaries as a percentage of all in relevant age group 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (ALMPs) NICE/JOBS (NAPP, CPIP, SBTAP) 2.58 1.29 STEP SMILES (≈age 20-39) SSDF (HOPE) SSDF (BNTF) NELP NSDC OECS (≈age 15-39) YAEP (≈age 15-35) 6.45 0.38 0.62 1.05 0.63 0.53 0.44 1.46 1.12 1.42 1.24 0.25 0.92 0.98 0.48 0.19 0.25 1.54 Source: Calculated on the basis of information received from programme administrations 4.3.4 Education support programmes (non-cash transfers) This sub section will remain brief in its description of the various programmes.
Analysis of objectives and covered population of child related social protection in Saint Lucia The objectives of the various programmes have an overlap – all aim at facilitating universal access to school, including for children from poor and vulnerable families into the education system.

However, the instruments or activities applied are clearly complementary.

The school feeding in-kind benefits, whereas programme provides the transportation programme provides a service.
The bursaries programmes offer cash transfers.

The SSLP/OLPC provides materials in the form of a laptop to secondary school students.

Finally, CASP engages children in poor, rural communities in ‘meaningful and productive activities’ after regular school hours (see Table 4-8).
62 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 4-8: Summary of child related social protection and education programmes in Saint Lucia Target groups Objectives Instruments applied s Children (general) p u o r g Disadvantaged children t e g r a T e m m a r g o r P s e v i t c e b o j / s e i t i v i t c A s l o o t FCUBE# Social protection Cash transfers In-kind transfers services Materials School transport School feeding Bursaries SSLP (OLPC) After school programme (Regular) (Once off) X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X X #: FCUBE=free, compulsory and universal basic education Source: Authors’Compilation The number of child beneficiaries can be seen in Table 4-9.
It is clear that these programmes are sizable in terms of their coverage.
Table 4-9: Number of SP/Education programmes beneficiaries Beneficiaries 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 (Social protection) School transport 2,542 2,645 2,558 2,409 - - School feeding 7,058 7,106 7,366 7,446 - - Bursaries (regular) 1,396 1,358 1,851 2,121 - - Bursaries (once-off ) - - - 2,637 2,533 2,631 OLPC - - - - 2,721 - After school programme - - - - 750 - Source: Ministry of Education and programme administrations Social Protection 63 Table 4-10 indicates that the share of girl students is close to 50 per cent for all the programmes.
Table 4-10: Female share among SP/Education programmes’ beneficiaries Female beneficiaries (as a percentage of all) 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 (Social protection) School transport School feeding Bursaries (regular) Bursaries (once-off ) OLPC 50.3 50.3 50.3 50.3 50.3 49.0 49.0 49.0 49.0 49.0 49.0 49.0 49.0 49.1 After school programme Source: Ministry of Education and programme administrations In terms of the relevant age group these programmes cover a significant proportion of the population; in as far as available data can show.
The coverage rate of the newly established once-off bursaries programme is even closer to universal.

Provided that the objective of the latter programme, like the other bursaries programmes, is to target the poor and vulnerable households, one can safely conclude that this particular programme is actually overshooting its objective (see table 4-11).
Table 4-11: SP/Education programmes’ beneficiaries share (15-65) age group Beneficiaries as a percentage of all children in relevant age group 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 School transport (age 5-11) School feeding (age 5-11) Bursaries (regular, age 5-11) Bursaries (once-off, age 12) OLPC (age 5-11) After school programme PAP** (age<18) SSDF (Koudmen Sent Lisi) - individuals, age <15 Source: Ministry of Education and programme administrations 13.9 42.8 12.2 94.9 16.0 The social protection budget 4.4 4.4.1 Methodology and data This section uses the Government of Saint Lucia’s budget estimates for the period 2009/10 – 2013/14.
For 2013/14 the revised budget figures are used and for 2014/15 the estimates, for the earlier FYs actual outturns have been used.

There was the opportunity to use one extra year of analysis here, as the new budget format for this ministry is similar to the format used up to 2013/14.

For other ministries, this was not the case, thus making comparison impossible.
It must be noted that in the latest 64 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA budget, estimates for 2015/16 and 2016/17 are also published.

However, these do not give information on the estimated capital expenditures.

Besides, much of the figures for 2015/16 and 2016/17 were exact copies of 2014/15 figures, which indicated that the estimates for 2015/16 and 2016/17 are not completely ready as yet.
The same approach has been followed as in the previous chapters to arrive at the ‘new real budget’, the starting point for the budget analysis in this study.

Table 4-12 provides the conversion for both the administrative and the economic classification.
Table 4-12: Conversion table MOST Administrative classification Economic classification Agency administration Social transformation Salaries Personal emoluments Sports and youth services Wages Sports Youth services Travel and subsistence Rewards, compensation and incentives Retroactive wage settlements Boys Training Centre Local government Training Goods and services Office and general expense Supplies and materials Tools and Instruments Utilities Operating and maintenance Professional and consultancy services Advertising Equipment Hire of equipment Communication Capital - equipment Office costs Rental of property Insurance Capital Other Miscellaneous Capital – programmes Grants and contributions Subsidies Public assistance Source: Authors.
Notes: The categories in bold are the new categories.

Any categories below the bold items are combined into the bold category.

Social Protection 65 4.4.2 The budget of the Ministry of Social Transformation The newly categorized, inflation-corrected budget for the Ministry of Social Transformation (MOST) per programme, can be found in Table 4-13.
The biggest programmes for MOST are the Social Transformation programme (48.8 per cent of the total budget 2009-2015) and the Local Government programme (24.5 per cent).

The Ministry’s budget saw a huge jump from 2009/10 to 2010/11 in total expenditures, mostly related to the addition of the Local Government programme and the Welfare Services programme, which were under different ministries in previous years.

The ministry saw its highest expenditures in 2010/11, with almost 76 million EC$.
Especially the Boys Training Center (BTC) received considerable funding (over 10 million EC$) in that year.

For 2014/15, the total ministries’ expenditure is budgeted at a little under 44 million EC$.
Table 4-13: Condensed budget MOST, administrative classification, 2009-2015 (in 1,000 EC$, constant 2012/13 prices) Administrative classification 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 Year % of MOST total Agency administration 1,502 1,664 1,764 1,482 1,714 1,598 2.9% Social transformation 30,548 34,469 29,946 26,690 25,171 15,881 48.8% Of which SSDF 7,987 18,958 17,974 10,049 11,749 6,146 21,9% 777 1,140 452 1,521 1,005 Of which after school Prog.

Of which labour Absorp.


Prog Sports and Youth Services 11,160 8,082 4,383 10.632 - - - - - - - - - 1,5% 3,2% 7.1% Boys Training Center 1,648 10,620 2,788 2,243 2,501 2,183 6.6% Local government Welfare services - - 14,589 12,534 18,905 19,408 16,216 24.5% 6,514 7,088 6,097 5,957 8,046 10.1% Total 44,859 75,938 58,504 55,419 54,751 43,925 100.0% Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013b, 2014), MGSoG/Magazijn13 edit.

Table 4-14 (overleaf ) shows the budget in the economic classification.
Salaries, showing a primarily increasing trend of expenditure over the years, account for 17.4 per cent of expenditure over 2009-2015.

Office costs make up 13.6 per cent, grants and contributions 12.6 per cent.

The high share allocated to other costs (38.9 per cent) is mostly related to the capital programmes which fall under this category.
66 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 4-14: Condensed budget MOST economic classification, 2009-2015 (in constant 2012/13 prices and 1,000 EC$) 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 Year Total 2009- 2014 10,437 11,090 11,843 12,119 11,781 17.4% Economic classification Salaries Training Goods and services Equipment Office costs Other Grants and Contributions Subsidies 4,818 130 1,445 1,263 6,118 26,321 4,764 - 31 5,137 594 20,727 24,412 8,344 - 121 4,908 1,524 8,433 19,749 5,839 - 28 4,132 417 3,151 24 5,611 726 951 28 5,439 364 178 0.1% 7.3% 1.6% 13.6% 21,028 21,144 10,021 38.9% 8,949 8,512 8,339 12.6% - - - 0.0% 8.5% Public assistance 0 6,255 6,839 5,870 5,664 7,776 Total 44,859 75,938 58,504 55,419 54,751 43,925 100.0% Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013b, 2014), Authors’ own calculations The division between recurrent and capital expenditures for the ministry is presented in Table 4-15.
It can be observed that a little over half of the ministries’ expenditures is capital expenditures.

Of the capital expenditures, 76.7 per cent can be attributed to social transformation (over the period 2009/2014).

The local government programme is the biggest programme in the recurrent expenditures, with 43.7 per cent of the recurrent budget.
Table 4-15: Recurrent, capital and total expenditure of MOST, 2009-2014 (in constant 2012/13 prices and 1,000 EC$) Recurrent expenditure (RE) Capital expenditure (CE) Total Eependiture (TE) Programme ∑2009-2014 ∑2009-2014 ∑2009-2014 In 1,000 EC$ % of RE In 1,000 EC$ % of CE In 1,000 EC$ % of TE Agency administration 8,127 5.9% 0 0.0% 8,127 2.8% Social transformation 30,110 21.9% 116,715 76.7% 146,825 50.7% Sports and youth services Boys Training Center Local government Welfare services 4,300 9,044 60,026 25,657 3.1% 6.6% 43.7% 18.7% 19,326 12.7% 23,626 8.2% 10,756 5,410 0 7.1% 3.6% 0.0% 19,800 6.8% 65,436 22.6% 25,657 8.9% Total 137,265 100.0% 152,206 100.0% 289,471 100.0% Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013b), Authors’ own calculations Social Protection 67 Table 4-16 shows MOST’s [own] revenues.
Only the local government programme has income from revenues, accounting for 2.7 per cent of the total expenditures for local government, and only 0.3 per cent of the total (recurrent and capital) expenditures for MOST, over 2010-2015.
Table 4-16: Revenues MOST, 2009-2015 (in constant 2012/13 prices and 1,000 EC$) Revenues 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2014/15 Year % of expenditure Local government Total 154 154 200 200 151 151 212 212 189 189 2.7% 0.3% Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013b, 2014), Authors’ own calculations Table 4-17: Staff expenditures MOST, 2009-2015 (in constant 2012/13 prices and 1,000 EC$) Salaries Year 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Total salary expenditure (EC$) 4,817,753 10,437,273 11,089,859 11,842,978 12,118,658 Total no.
of staff.

Total expenditure / total no.

of staff (EC$) 84 86 84 94 94 57,354 121,364 132,022 125,989 128,922 Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013b), Authors’ own calculations The expenditure on salaries fluctuates, when calculated on a per staff basis.

The average expenditure per worker is in the range of 125,000 EC$, which seems a lot when compared for example to 48,000 EC$ to 50,000 EC$ per staff member for education.
The total number of staff positions remained relatively stable between 84 and 94 (see Table 4-17).

two biggest programmes The terms of expenditure are the social transformation and in local government.

Allocation of expenditures for social transformation for the years 2009/10 and 2013/14 is shown in figure 4.2.

The allocation is relatively stable, with the exception of the change relating to the labour absorption programme and SSDF.
In 2013/14, SSDF seems to have taken up the budget that was allocated to the labour absorption programme in 2009/10.

Also interesting to note is that salaries take up only 5 per cent of the total budget for this programme.

68 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Figure 4-2: Allocation of expenditure for social transformation, 2009/10 and 2013/14 2009/10 2013/14 Source: GOSL (2009, 2013); Authors’ own calculations The local government programme shows a different image.
Looking at Figure 4-3 reveals that 44 per cent of budget were spent on salaries in 2013/14.

For this programme, only one year is presented, as the budget allocation does not differ that much from previous years.

Figure 4-3: Allocation of expenditure for local government, 2013/14 4.4.3 Spending execution Table 4-18 presents to what extent the actual expenditures are in line with the revised budget.

For this comparison, figures from 2008/09 until 2011/12 are available from the Government budget estimates.
It can be noted that in 2008, 2009 and 2011, the expenditure was less than the total amount budgeted for by the ministry.40 In total, the budget stayed 4.2 per cent below the actual budget.

Source: GOSL (2013); Authors’ own calculations 40 In 2010/11 there was a huge deviation in expenditure (118.4 per cent higher expenditure than the revised budget stated), but this was due to changes in programmes.
The programmes local government and welfare services were added, and sports and youth services was removed from this ministry.

For this table, these programme changes were not taken into account.

Therefore, the 118.4 per cent is not shown in the table above.

Not considering these programmes leads to a total deviation for 2011/12 of 0.4 per cent for the MOST, which is shown in the table above.
Social Protection 69 Table 4-18: Deviation of expenditure from revised budget (recurrent), 2008/09-2011/12 (in constant 2012/13 prices and 1,000 EC$) Year 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 Average deviation (in EC$) Average deviation (in %) -11.4% 13.2% 6.5% 5.4% 48,872 3.4% -11.8% -11.1% -2.0% 0.2% -358,835 -6.1% -9.6% -1.9% Omitted -- - 141,753 -5.7% -6.4% -8.5% 4.4% -10.6% -89,836 -5.3% Programme Agency administration Social transformation Sports and youth services Boys Training Center Local government Welfare services Total (%) -10.5% -5.5% In EC$ of Revised Budget 1,264,065 683,696 -- -- -- -- Omitted -9.6% -318,717 -9.6% Omitted 0.4% 34,711 15,495,277 17.4% -1.3% - 377,965 252,077 17.4% -4.2% 572,754 572,754 572,754 Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013), MSGoG/Magazijn13 own calculations.
Note: Positive deviations (thereby exceeding the revised budget) of more that 10 per cent are highlighted in blue.

Omitted categories are omitted from this analysis because these programmes were added to or removed from the ministries’ responsibilities in that year.

Therefore, including these would create a distorted image.
for the average Examining the programmes deviation (in EC$, shown in Table 4-18 in the sixth column), the biggest part of the total absolute exceeding expenditure comes from welfare services, exceeding the budget by EC$ 252,077.

4.4.4 The SSDF budget The Saint Lucia Social Development Fund (SSDF) is the consolidation of the Poverty Reduction Fund and the Basic Needs Trust Fund (BNTF) which was discussed in section 4.3.3.

Table 4-19 shows the income of SSDF for 2010/11 until 2013/14.
The budget of the SSDF had been increasing every year from 2010 to 2012/13, until it was cut by more than half in 2013/14 compared to the previous year.

In 2012/13, the largest SSDF programmes were BNTF (24.4 per cent of total income in 2012/13), followed by STEP (23.7 per cent) and HOPE (21.2 per cent).

Seven per cent was budgeted for administration costs.

In 2013/14, STEP was largest and received 36.4 per cent of the total SSDF budget.
70 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Programmes 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Administration 1,974 2,242 Table 4-19: SSDF income, 2010-2014 (in 1,000 EC$, constant 2012/13 prices) % of total (2010- 2014) % of total (2012/13) % of total (2013/14) 9.8% 13.2% 20.4% 32.2% 8.5% 5.9% 5.8% 4.2% 7.0% 23.7% 24.4% 21.2% 16.3% 0.5% 2.5% 4.3% 16.4% 36.4% 19.8% 13.7% 13.7% - - - 1,714 5,800 5,969 5,200 4,000 120 609 1,062 1,775 3,942 2,146 1,478 1,478 - - - - 3,547 13,066 - 2,099 - 32 - 4,305 6,499 921 2,703 4,060 2,188 20,719 22,918 24,473 10,819 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% STEP BNTF HOPE KSL CDP SFA 2006 Other Total Source: SSDF Figure 4-4 provides a different overview of the income data which helps to give a better grasp of the shares of the programmes.
For example, it can be noted that the HOPE programme was rather large in 2010/11, while being less prominent in recent years.

The figure shows how STEP was the biggest programme in 2013/14 and that administration costs were relatively stable, but increased in 2013/14 (as a percentage of the total income).

Figure 4-4: SSDF income, 2009-2014 Other SFA 2006 CDP KSL Other SFA 2006 KSL H.O.P.E.

H.O.P.E.

BNTF BNTF Admin S.T.E.P.

Admin KSL H.O.P.E.

BNTF S.T.E.P.


Admin t n e c r e P 100% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% CDP H.O.P.E.

BNTF Admin 2010-2011 2011-2012 2012-2013 2013-2014 Year Source: SSDF Social Protection 71 Table 4-20 shows the expenditure of SSDF for the years 2010/11 until 2013/14.

In general, the numbers give a similar image as the income (presented here again), with small differences in the allocation (both over the programmes and the years).
Administration costs turn out to be more than 5 percentage points higher (as a percentage of total) than the (budgeted) income.
Table 4-20: SSDF expenditures, 2010-2014 (in 1,000 EC$, constant 2012/13 prices) Programme 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 % of total expenditure (2010-2014) % of total income (2010-2014) % of total expenditure (2013/14) % of total income (2013/14) Administration41 STEP BNTF HOPE 2,665 2,407 2,536 2,890 15.5% - Of which admin KSL Of which admin - - 242 1,468 1,527 5.0% 8.5% 16.6% 13.7% 50 342 378 1,851 2,410 122 4 1,253 4,988 226 188 6.1% 9.4% 5.9% 5.8% 0.0% 0.0% 2.0% 0.0% 462 36 747 - - 61 33 76 0.3% 4.2% 0.8% 0.0% 21,518 23,943 21,660 12,079 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% CDP SFA 2006 Of which admin Other Total Source: SSDF The allocation of administration costs for SSDF are presented in Table 4-21: 43 per cent goes into administrative salaries and 14 per cent goes to office and general expenses.
HOPE administrative expenditure was substantial with 15 per cent of total administration costs of SSDF over 2010-2014.

Some small categories were taken together in ‘other categories’ of expenditures.

41 This excludes KSL, HOPE AND SFA 2006 administration costs for better comparison with the SSDF income.

The administration costs of these programs are mentioned in the table under the programs however.

And in further analysis, these costs are taken into account.
72 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 4-21: SSDF Administration Costs42, 2010- 2014 (constant 2012/13 prices, per cent) Administrative classification % of SSDF total Relocation expenses43 Office & general expenses Utilities Personal emoluments KSL admin HOPE admin SFA 2006 admin Other categories44 Total Source: SSDF 3% 14% 6% 43% 5% 15% 8% 6% 100% Figure 4-5 offers a comparative perspective showing the SSDF programme’s administration expenditures compared to the programme income.
Adding the administration costs and the programme expenditures would give the total SSDF costs.

These seem to be reasonably in line with the total income.

In some years, income appears slightly (administration plus higher than expenditure programme expenditure) and vice versa.

remain The expenditure drops substantially in 2013/14.

Administration costs relatively stable, where one might expect these costs to drop along with the programme costs.
Even when accounting for programme-specific administration costs, as is done here45, the administration costs remain relatively high.

A partial explanation can be found in the relocation of SSDF in 2013/14; SSDF spent almost half a million EC$ on relocation.
But still, administration costs do not seem to be moving Figure 4-5: Income, programme and administration expenditures SSDF, 2010-2014 (in EC $1,000, constant 2012/13 prices) 30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000 10,000 5,000 0 2010-2011 2011-2012 2012-2013 2013-2014 Admin expenditure (excl.

KSL admin Programme expenditure Income Source: SSDF.

Note: Here, all administration costs are taken into account.
This includes the general administration costs, but also program specific admin costs for KSL, HOPE and SFA 2006.

It also takes into account some minor administration costs where possible (i.e.

project management costs and office costs).

42 Besides the general SSDF administration costs, in this comparison KSL, HOPE and SFA 2006 administration costs are also taken into account.
These are separate items because the classification for admin costs under these programs is not similar to the categories used for the general administration costs of SSDF.

43 These costs were only made in 2013/14 due to the relocation of SSDF in that specific year.

44 Includes gratuity expense, reimbursements / refunds, professional and consultation services, tools & instruments, insurance, human resource / training, travel & subsistence, and other.
45 See the note below Social Protection 73 along with the programme cost.

For a large part because office and general expenses, and personal emoluments (general SSDF administration costs) were not significantly reduced compared to 2012/13.

This makes sense, for this one year at least, as personnel and office and general expenses are not as easily reduced as budgets.
4.4.5 Financial analysis of the social protection programmes In this section three tables are presented, each with five panels, all in constant (2012/13) prices, for each of the three clusters mentioned earlier: (i) cash transfer programmes and other services in the area of social protection, (ii) active labour market programmes (for the working age population), and (iii) social protection (education and support) programmes for children.
The first panel in each table presents total expenditure, the second panel presents expenditure per capita (total cost over the total number of beneficiaries), the third total administration costs, the fourth administration costs as a share of total expenditure, and the fifth panel shows administration costs per capita (total administration costs over the total number of beneficiaries).
cash cluster, the first Regarding transfer programmes and other services in the area of social protection; the following observations can be made from the table.

Firstly, the total GDP share of expenditure for the cash transfer programmes and services lies between 0.2 and 0.5 per cent, and these programmes represent a share of around 1 per cent of government expenditures.

This is rather low for a middle income country.

Secondly, annual programme expenditure tends to be volatile.
This is visible when looking at expenditure for the Public Assistance programme, for example, where expenditure drops from EC$ 7.1 million in 2011/12 to EC$ 5.9 million in 2012/13 and again to EC$ 6.5 million (all in constant prices).

Moreover, a 5.3 per cent real increase between 2009/10 and 2013/14 is rather modest considering the importance of programme.
The strong increase in spending on KSL relates to the fact that this programme emerged from its pilot status to become a ‘full-fledged’ programme in 2012/13.

The second panel reveals that per capita spending in some of the programmes differs among the various programmes.

KSL, the Women’s Support Centre and BELFund have a much higher level of per capita expenditure than public assistance.

There are some substantial differences between consecutive years as well.
For example, per capita expenditure in KSL rises from EC$ 2,424 in 2011/12 to EC$ 14,678 in 2012/13, and per capita spending on Family and Child Care rises sharply from EC$ 994 in 2012/13 to EC$ 6,140 in 2013/14.

Turning to administration expenditure, it can be observed that the share of administration costs in total expenditure for KSL and BELFund lies much higher than for the public assistance programme.

The latter programme has administration costs at around 4 per cent of total spending.
This is low, compared to KSL (25 percent) and BELFund (above 70 per cent).

This might be related to the characteristics of these programmes with, for example, KSL’s multiple referrals to other programmes.

For the BELFund, administration costs are as high as 70 per cent of total expenditure.
However, this figure probably does not reflect the peculiarities of the programme, since much of the spending is channelled through a revolving fund and inflows will more or less match outflows and, therefore, net spending can be low.
74 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 4-22: Comprehensive expenditure and administration costs overview – Cash transfers (in constant 2012/13 prices) Expenditure in 1,000 EC$ Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (Cash Transfers and Services) PAP (households) PAP (individuals, working age) SSDF (Koudmen Sent Lisi)# SSDF (Koudmen Sent Lisi) - individuals, working age SSDF (other programmes)# Belfund Women’s Support Centre - MOST gender division Family and child care - human services Health Total expenditure (% government expenditure) (% GDP) 2009/10- 2013/14 5.3 - 5,245 6,498 7,076 5,872 6,456 - - - - 1,409 335 709 - 7,091 0.7$% 0.2% - - - 5,804 1,262 361 678 - - 242 - 9,865 830 351 699 - - - 1,468 1,527 151.0 - 2,917 1,205 337 554 - - - 3,159 -18.4 - 298 632 - -5.1 -2.8 -2.8 - 14,129 18,634 11,972 11,609 13.1 1.2% 0.4% 1.5% 0.5% 0.9% 0.3% 1.0% 0.3% Expenditure/beneficiary in EC$ Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2009/10- 2013/14 (Cash Transfers and Services) NIC (non old-age pension cash transfers - short and long term) PAP (households) PAP (individuals, working age) SSDF (Koudmen Sent Lisi)# SSDF (Koudmen Sent Lisi) - individuals, working age SSDF (other programmes)# Belfund Women’s Support Centre - MOST gender division Family and child care - human services 2,571 2,336 2,584 0.3 2,424 14,678 - - 28,175 17,606 1,314 19,720 14,814 18,037 18,475 2,347 1,766 19,433 22,463 994 - 19,883 6,140 -11.6 3.1 47.0 Administration cost in 1,000 EC$ Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (Cash transfers and services) PAP (households) PAP (individuals, working age) SSDF (Koudmen Sent Lisi)# SSDF (Koudmen Sent Lisi) - individuals, working age SSDF (other programmes)# Belfund Women’s Support Centre - MOST gender division Family and child care - human services 309 258 252 - - - - - - - - - - - - 177 - 342 - - 1,279 895 784 844 - - - - - - - - 249 - 378 - - - - - 2009/10 to 2013/14 -5.3 -12.9 Social Protection 75
 Administration cost as a percentage of total cost Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (Cash Transfers and Services) PAP (individuals, working age) SSDF (Koudmen SL)# SSDF (Koudmen SL) - individuals, working age SSDF (other programmes)# Belfund 5.9 4.0 3.6 3.0 - 70.9 90.8 - - 94.5 23.3 - 70.0 3.9 24.7 - Administration cost per person/year in EC$ 2009/10 Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2009/10 to 2013/14 (Cash Transfers and Services) PAP (households) PAP (individuals, working age) SSDF (Koudmen SL)# SSDF (Koudmen SL) - individuals, working age - - - - 3,415 - SSDF (other programmes)# Belfund 25,577 13,984 4,003 13,610 - - -19.0 92 70 100 4.3 Observing the table for the second cluster of programmes, the ALMPs, it appears that the total GDP share of expenditure for ALMPs is in the range of 0.5 and 0.9 per cent of GDP, and between 1.5 and 3 per cent of Government expenditure – this is substantial.
In fact, Saint Lucia spends a larger share of its GDP on these labour market programmes than a large number of OECD countries, including Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Secondly, it again appears that the expenditure is volatile.

This, in particular, is visible for STEP and BNTF.


Other programmes such as HOPE have seen their expenditure drop from EC$ 11.5 million to just below EC$ 3 million, representing an annual decrease of 36.5 per cent between 2010/11 and 2013/14.

Expenditure per participant in NICE and HOPE lies between EC$ 6,000 and EC$ 10,000, whereas, per capita spending in some of the other programmes is around EC$ 500 (STEP and NELP).
Given that objectives and target groups of these various programmes have major overlaps, some appear to be much more expensive than others.

For most programmes information on administration was not available.

For programmes where data was obtained, it is noticeable that administration costs range between 11 and 16 per cent of total expenditure.

NICE has rather high administration costs per participant, close to 1,000 EC$, more than 10 times the figure for STEP.
The share of administration costs in total expenditure, however, is comparable in both programmes – around 15 per cent.
76 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 4-23: Comprehensive expenditure and administration costs overview – ALMPs (in constant 2012/13 prices) Expenditure in 1,000 EC$ Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 to 2013/14 (ALMPs) NICE/JOBS (NAPP, CPIP, SBTAP) - - - 19,456 13,118 STEP SMILES SSDF (HOPE) SSDF (BNTF) NELP NSDC OECS YAEP - - 2,060 6,723 3,554 - - - - - - 11,562 7,365 5,770 2,964 - 4,160 4,326 4,779 1,881 741 792 760 806 786 - - - - - - - - - - - - - 99 - -36.5 -23.2 1.5 Total Expenditure 752 16,757 14,724 38,084 22,630 10.5 (% government expenditure) (% GDP) 0.1% 0.0% 1.5% 0.5% 1.2% 0.4% 2.8% 1.1% 1.9% 0.6% Expenditure/beneficiary in EC$ Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 to 2013/14 (ALMPs) NICE/JOBS (NAPP, CPIP, SBTAP) STEP SMILES SSDF (HOPE) SSDF (BNTF) NELP NSDC OECS YAEP 6,551 8,728 473 - - 9,874 10,315 9,443 5,823 -16.1 464 634 470 566 6.8 - - - - - - - Administration cost in 1,000 EC$ Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2009/10 to 2013/14 (ALMPs) NICE/JOBS (NAPP, CPIP, SBTAP) STEP YAEP - - - - - - - - - 6,551 1,450 - 532 555 - Social Protection 77 Administration cost in per cent of total cost Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2009/10 to 2013/14 (ALMPs) NICE/JOBS (NAPP, CPIP, SBTAP) STEP YAEP 15,6 1,450 - - 534,8 555 - Administration cost in per person/year in EC$ Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (ALMPs) NICE/JOBS (NAPP, CPIP, SBTAP) STEP 1.021 965 74 11,1 15,6 2009/10 to 2013/14 The following table shows budget allocations, beneficiaries and expenditure related to social protection (Education Support) programmes for children, the third cluster of social protection programmes.
Table 4-24: Comprehensive expenditure and administration costs overview – child related programmes (in constant 2012/13 prices) Expenditure in 1,000 EC$ Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (Social Protection) School transport School feeding Bursaries (regular) Bursaries (once-off ) OLPC After school programme PAP** SSDF (Koudmen SL) - individuals, age <15 Child disability grant Total expenditure 2009/10 to 2013/14 -5.3 8.0 32.4 3,965 1,593 3,539 1,705 3,645 1,857 3,427 3,191 - - - - - - - - 1,319 - 436 795 1,521 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1,248 3,191 1,014 - - - 5,639 5,763 6,389 6,359 8,772 11.7 (per cent government expenditure) (per cent GDP) 0.5% 0.2% 0.5% 0.2% 0.5% 0.2% 0.5% 0.2% 0.7% 0.2% 78 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Expenditure/beneficiary in EC$ Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (Social Protection) School transport School feeding Bursaries (regular) Bursaries (once-off ) OLPC After school programme PAP** SSDF (Koudmen SL) - individuals, age <15 Child disability grant 1,560 226 - 1,338 240 - 1,425 252 - 1,423 - - 500 493 1,173 2009/10 to 2013/14 -2.1 5.7 Administration cost in 1,000 EC$ Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (Social Protection) School Transport School Feeding - - - 21 - 21 - - Administration cost in per cent of total cost Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (Social Protection) School Transport School Feeding - - - 1,3 - 1,1 - - - - Administration cost in per person/year in EC$ Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (Social Protection) School Transport School Feeding - - - 3,0 - 2,9 - - Expenditure patterns are much more smooth here than earlier with programmes for working age groups Social Protection 79 – with the exception perhaps of the after school programme.
What can be further noted is that overall spending on social protection for children is well below the amount of spending for the adult categories.

Expenditure on social protection provisions for children represents a modest share of 0.2 per cent of GDP and 0.5 to 0.7 per cent of total government spending.

The information on administration costs is rather scarce.

For the school feeding programme available statistics reveal that administration costs are less than 2 per cent of total expenditure.
Related to the large number of students benefitting from the programme economies of scale in administration costs are large – per capita spending on the school feeding programme is as low as EC$ 3 per child.

4.4.6 Key performance indicators Table 4-25 overleaf shows some KPIs for the social protection programmes.

It is clear from the table that for none of the programmes, the information is complete.
For example, for the education programmes with a social protection objective, the financial information is limited.

This calls upon the respective administrations to collect and report this information.

For the cash-transfer and community development programmes, most information is collected and reported on the household level.

This renders it difficult to come to a conclusion on the gender and child responsiveness of these programmes.
The exception is the KSL programme, but this covers a limited number of individuals.

For the ALMPs the information collected is sufficient to a fair extent.

This is particularly true for the more general ALMPs that are administered by NICE and SSDF.

For the skills training programmes there are still some gaps in the data made available for this report.
The table sends out a message to the Government that, in order to obtain adequate monitoring and evaluation information, a certain minimum amount of information needs to be collected on a systematic basis.

From the information that is presented several conclusions can be drawn.

Firstly, that coverage for the education programmes is adequate.

The gender ratio is what one would expect from these programmes.

Secondly, the coverage rate of public assistance is close to its target.
Coverage for KSL is on a far lower level, but given that this is pilot programme this is not surprising.

The average benefit level calculated from administrative data (EC$ 201) is below the reported level (EC$ 270) and would provide cover in the order of 40 per cent of the estimated poverty threshold.
The administration cost per staff appears low for KSL, this would be surprising given the nature of this programme that provides also in-kind services to households (for example, counselling), hence this is something that might warrant further clarification.

Thirdly, the one thing that stands out when observing the ALMP statistics is the variation in wage levels and duration between these programmes.

These programmes provide wages that are in the range of 1.5 to 2.5 of the poverty threshold.
This can be considered as high given that these programmes have an objective of preparing jobseekers and other disadvantaged groups for a regular job in the labour market.

Wage levels that might even exceed entry wage levels in the job market do not encourage jobseekers to leave the programme when a job opening would occur.
80 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 4-25: KPIs social protection programmes Performance indicators for social programmes (I) Programme name: Coverage (general) School programmes with a (partial) social protection objective Bursaries (regular) Bursaries (once-off) OLPC Transport Feeding C3a1 Number of beneficiaries 2,121 2,533 2,721 2,409 7,446 C3a2 Change in number of beneficiaries 270 -104 n.a.
-149 340 C3a3 Number of potential beneficiaries C3a4 Coverage rate (beneficiaries) C3a5 Coverage gap (exclusion error) C3a6 Targeting accuracy (inclusion error) Coverage (gender responsive) G1a1 Gender coverage rate Coverage (youth responsive) 30,340 0.07 28,219 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 13,576 16,764 0.18 0.44 11,167 9,318 .. .. 0.49 0.49 0.50 0.49 Y1a1 Youth coverage rate 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 1.00 Coverage (programme specific) S1a1 Public schools covered S1a2 Total public schools S1a3 School coverage ratio R1a1 Constituencies coverage ratio (1 = national coverage) 82 84 0.98 1.00 .. .. .. .. Benefits (this applies to cash transfer programmes) (per year) B1a1 Average benefit level B1a2 Change in average benefit level .. .. 500 .. B1b5 Ratio of average benefit to poverty line B5a1 Average duration for benefit payment .. .. .. .. n.a.
n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

14 23 70 75 0.61 0.93 0.83 1.00 n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.
Social Protection 81 Performance indicators for social programmes (II) Programme name: Financing (in EC$ 1,000) F1a1 Annual revenue F1a2 Change in annual revenue F1b4 Grant share F2a1 Annual expenditure F2a2 Change in annual expenditure F2b1 Benefit share (Programme cost) F2c1 Administration cost ratio (per cent) F2c2 Administration cost ratio (revenue) F2d1 Salaries cost ratio (expenditure) F3a1 Annual balance F3a2 Change in annual balance Financing (programme specific) S3a1 costs of inputs Administration A4a1 Total number of staff A4a2 Ratio of staff to clients A4a3 Share of front-line staff A4a4 Ratio of staff salary to that in public sector A4b1 Administration cost A4b2 Administration cost per staff member S4a1 Payment of provider irregularities School programmes with a (partial) social protection objective Bursaries (regular) Bursaries (once-off) OLPC Transport Feeding .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 1,945 (50) 1,267 3,238 3,238 1,592 49 n.a.
(189) .. .. .. .. 1,572 1.3 .. .. .. .. .. .. 2 0.0003 20,028 10,014 82 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Performance Indicators for Social programmes (I) Cash transfers Community/family development Enterpreneurial Programme name: PAP BNTF KSL BELfund YAEP Coverage (general) (households) C3a1 Number of beneficiaries C3a2 Change in number of beneficiaries C3a3 Number of potential beneficiaries C3a4 Coverage rate (beneficiaries) C3a5 Coverage gap (exclusion error) C3a6 Targeting accuracy (inclusion error) Coverage (gender responsive) G1a1 Gender coverage rate Coverage (youth responsive) Y1a1 Youth coverage rate Coverage (programme specific) 2,498 -16 2,656 0.94 158 .. .. .. R1a1 Constituencies coverage ratio (1 = national coverage) 1.00 Benefits (this applies to cash transfer programmes) (per month) B1a1 Average benefit level B1a2 Change in average benefit level B1b5 Ratio of average benefit to poverty line B5a1 Average duration for benefit payment Services (this applies to non-cash transfer programmes) S2a1 Services provided (categories) 210 21 0.4 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 496 0 57 -5 150 0 2,656 not avlbl.
0.19 2,160 .. .. .. 0.52 0.60 0.66 1.00 1.00 1.00 .. .. .. .. 7 Social Protection 83 Performance indicators for social programmes (II) Cash transfers Community/ family development Entrepreneurial Programme name: PAP BNTF KSL BELfund YAEP Financing (in EC$ 1,000) Annual revenue 6,045 2,177 1,500 1,436 2,530 Change in annual revenue (53) (3,792) (2,500) 453 840 Grant share Annual expenditure 6,551 1,909 1,550 1,205 0.48 Change in annual expenditure 82 409 Benefit share (Programme cost) 6,298 F1a1 F1a2 F1b4 F2a1 F2a2 F2b1 F2c1 Administration cost ratio (per cent) Administration A4a1 A4a2 A4a3 A4a4 A4b1 A4b2 S4a1 Total number of staff Ratio of staff to clients Share of front-line staff Ratio of staff salary to that in public sector Administration cost Administration cost per staff member Payment of provider irregularities 3.9 4 0.0016 252,429 63,107 .. .. .. .. .. 1,167 24.7 13 0.0262 0.85 361 70.0 8 0.14 383,132 843,822 29,472 0.34 Performance indicators for social programmes (I) ALMPs Programme name: CPIP NAPP STEP HOPE Coverage (general) C3a1 Number of beneficiaries C3a2 Change in number of beneficiaries C3a3 Number of potential beneficiaries C3a4 Coverage rate (beneficiaries) C3a5 Coverage gap (exclusion error) C3a6 Targeting accuracy (inclusion error) Coverage (gender responsive) G1a1 Gender coverage rate Coverage (youth responsive) Y1a1 Youth coverage rate Coverage (programme specific) 1,228 22,775 0.05 21,547 .. 0.03 .. R1a1 Constituencies coverage ratio (1 = national coverage) 1.00 Benefits (this applies to cash transfer programmes) 1,349 81 22,775 0.06 21,426 .. 0.68 .. 1.00 7,514 22,775 0.33 15,261 .. .. .. 509 -102 22,775 0.02 22,266 .. 0.74 0.03 1.00 1.00 (this is: average wage per month) B1a1 Average benefit level 731 898 960 1,390 B1a2 Change in average benefit level B1b5 Ratio of average benefit to poverty line 1.4 1.7 1.8 2.6 B5a1 Average duration for benefit payment 6 months 6 to 12 months 2 Weeks 3 months 84 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Performance indicators for social
 programmes (II) ALMPs Programme name: CPIP NAPP STEP HOPE Financing (in EC$ 1,000) F1a1 F1a2 F1b4 F2a1 F2a2 F2b1 F2c1 Annual Revenue Change in Annual Revenue Grant share Annual Expenditure Change in Annual Expenditure Benefit share (Programme cost) Administration cost ratio (per cent) Administration Total number of staff Ratio of staff to clients Share of front-line staff Ratio of staff salary to that in public sector A4a1 A4a2 A4a3 A4a4 A4b1 A4b2 S4a1 4,000 1,500 (1,800) (3,700) 11,738 5,698 3,606 3,007 (1,069) (3,118) (2,762) 11,032 5,389 3,043 2,360 15.6 .. 5.4 .. 15.6 21.5 .. 5 0.0007 0.80 Administration cost 1,829,061 309,364 563,040 647,532 Administration cost per staff member Payment of provider irregularities Performance indicators for social programmes (I) Skills training Programme name: Coverage (general) C3a1 C3a2 C3a3 C3a4 C3a5 C3a6 Number of beneficiaries Change in number of beneficiaries Number of potential beneficiaries Coverage Rate (beneficiaries) Coverage gap (exclusion error) Targeting accuracy (inclusion error) Coverage (gender responsive) G1a1 Gender coverage rate Coverage (youth responsive) Y1a1 Youth coverage rate Coverage (programme specific) R1a1 Constituencies coverage ratio (1 = national coverage) Benefits (this applies to cash transfer programmes) B1a1 B1a2 B1b5 B5a1 Average benefit level Change in average benefit level Ratio of average benefit to poverty line Average duration for benefit payment OECS Skills 868 729 13,848 0.06 12,980 ..
SMILES NELP NSDC 214 .. .. .. .. .. 1,425 -191 367 -514 .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 0.70 1.00 0.72 0.54 .. .. n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

0.00 .. n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.
Social Protection 85 Performance indicators for social programmes (II) Skills training Programme name: Financing (in EC$ 1,000) F1a1 F1a2 F1b4 F2a1 F2a2 F2b1 F2c1 Annual revenue Change in annual revenue Grant share Annual expenditure Change in annual expenditure Benefit share (programme cost) Administration cost ratio (per cent) Administration A4a1 A4a2 A4a3 A4a4 A4b1 A4b2 S4a1 Total number of staff Ratio of staff to clients Share of front-line staff Ratio of staff salary to that in public sector Administration cost Administration cost per staff member Payment of provider irregularities OECS Skills SMILES NELP NSDC 4,066 1,000 795 2,592 (1,217) (200) (11) - .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 798 (8) .. .. 107 0.08 .. .. .. .. 18 0.05 .. .. 4.5 Assessment of social protection benefits46 Social protection programmes in Saint Lucia entail a diverse set of design features, targeting methods and activities.
In order to make a solid assessment of the adequacy, distribution and coverage of social protection programmes, representative survey data capturing information on household or individual wealth together with information on recipients of social protection benefits and services would be necessary.
Since there is no recent survey providing information on beneficiaries of social protection programmes in Saint Lucia, the present assessment is limited to the analysis of the distribution of public assistance benefits.

Efforts to rationalize social protection expenditure address the extent to which social protection programmes and reaching vulnerable.

Reducing and preventing poverty and social exclusion are important objectives for all programmes.
The development of a common the poor are 46 For a compilation of child related social protection programmes and ALMPs for young adults, refer to the Annex.

86 targeting mechanism (CTM) alongside an improved registration of the poorest households is an important element in the rationalization of the current programmes.

In fact, the choice to focus on households as the unit for tailoring interventions is an important move, according to the NSPP.
It implies a shift from agencies undertaking multiplied efforts to select individual beneficiaries for separated interventions, to a coordinated institutional effort to select the poorest and most vulnerable households that are to receive a holistic set of interventions based on identified needs.
Household level targeting, allows for a more holistic and efficient approach to social protection that is focused on targeting social assistance to the entire gambit of need within the unit of the household rather than just the individuals within a household (MOSTGL 2013, p. 17).
The second important element that is to be developed under this ‘service delivery area’ is the development of a management information system (MIS) that will serve to process the data collected through the CTM to identify beneficiary households of the targeted social protection programmes and work as a unified BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA single registry (SR) data base.
The unified system will facilitate data sharing between programmes and agencies, promoting coordination and joint delivery, when desired, and avoiding duplication, where established.

In this sense, the common targeting mechanism the single registry (SR) will enable the operationalization of the social protection framework.
It will facilitate the defining of complementary (convergent) and substitute (divergent) services within the existing social protection interventions and establish clear interrelations under a consolidated framework (MOSTGL 2013, p. 17).

(CTM) and It needs to be emphasized that targeting will not in all cases be the most efficient mechanism for delivering programmes.
In general, the motivation for targeting derives from the following three elements: the objective to maximize the impact on the poor (and vulnerable), the circumstance that the available budget is limited to, and that, within this budget constraint, there is a trade-off between the number of beneficiaries and the level and quality of the benefit (World Bank 2010).

However, there are costs involved in targeting as well.
The main items are transaction costs – for the administration as well as for the receiving beneficiaries, and incentive costs – arising from changes in the economic behaviour of the beneficiaries to become (or remain) eligible for the programme.

Other possible costs associated with targeting are social costs – the programme might stigmatize its beneficiaries, and political costs - there tends to be less support for programmes that cater for a limited number of constituents (World Bank 2010).
The aim therefore is not, or should not be targeting in itself, targeting should be instrumental to arrive at an adequate, accessible, affordable, effective, efficient, sustainable and equitable social protection system, and a set of coherent economic, employment and social policies.

The public assistance programme The public assistance programme (PAP) under the Ministry of Social Transformation is Saint Lucia’s major poverty alleviation programme.
It provides cash benefits to needy persons (in severe poverty and/or persons with serious disability).

In 2013, the PAP programme covered 1 per cent of the total population of Saint Lucia (see Figure 4-6).

Taking into account that the last poverty analysis (based on data from 2005/06) identified 1.6 per cent of the population as indigent poor, there is an indication that PAP’s coverage is not optimal.
3.0% 2.5% 2.0% 1.5% 1.0% 0.5% 0.0% Figure 4-6: Coverage rates of PAP and average wealth scores by region, 2013 2.6% 2.6% 2.3% 1.2% 1.2% 0.9% 0.7% 0.7% 1.0% 1.0% 0.2% Canaries Anse la Raye Dennery Choiseul; Micoud Soufrière Laborie Vieux Fort Castries Gros Ilet Total St. Lucia Share of the popu;ation receiving PAP benefits Average Wealth Score 20 18 16 14 15 10 8 6 4 2 0 Source: Authors’ own calculations based on the PAP Access database for 2013 provided by MOST.
Social Protection 87 Figure 4-7: Distribution of PAP beneficiaries by regions, 2013 Source: Authors’ own calculations based on the PAP Access database for 2013 provided by MoST.

A large share of the PAP beneficiaries live in Castries (36 per cent).

This share is proportionate to the share of the total population living in the region, making up for 1 per cent coverage rate of the population in the region.
The regions where the largest share of the population is covered by the PAP are Canaries, Soufriere and Laborie (with coverage rates of respectively 2.6 per cent, 2.6 per cent and 2.3 per cent (see Figure 4-7).

The figure also shows comparison of coverage rates by region in order of regional wealth score47.

According to a ranking based on average wealth scores the poorest regions are Canaries, Anse la Raye and Dennery.
Interestingly, although Anse la Raye is classified as the second poorest region, the PAP coverage in this region is quite low (0.7 per cent) according to the public assistance database from 2013 (see Figure 4-7).

The major portion of recipients of public assistance benefits are over the age of 65 (see Table 4-26).

Children only constitute 1 per cent of all beneficiaries.

There are slightly more women among the recipients, 57 per cent.
In total, more than one third (37 per cent) of the beneficiaries (in some cases their dependants) are reported to have a high degree of disability or a serious chronic illness.
Table 4-26: Demographic characteristics of PAP beneficiaries, 2013 Age of beneficiaries Under 18 years old 16 1% Beneficiaries % Gender of beneficiaries Between 18 and 64 65 years or older Age not reported Female Male Gender not reported Disability or chronic illness Total 41% 45% 13% 57% 43% 598 653 189 810 600 46 541 37% 1,456 100% Source: Authors’ own calculations based on the PAP Access database for 2013 provided by MOST.
47 The average wealth score by region is provided by the Central Statistical Office of Saint Lucia and is calculated on the basis of the 2010 census data.

88 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA According to the PAP registry, in 2013, 7 per cent of all beneficiaries of PAP were new to the programme (receiving benefits for less than one year).

On average, a beneficiary had spent seven years on public assistance in 2013.
It seems that many (39%) of people remain in the programme for more than a decade (see Table 4-27).

Table 4-27: PAP beneficiaries by length of time in the programme, 2013 Period receiving benefits Beneficiaries % Cumulative % Table 4-28: Total monthly amounts of PAP by gender of the recipient, 2013 Amount Total % Women Men TOTAL 188,145 130,295 59% 41% 318,440 100% Source: Authors’ own calculations based on the PAP Access database for 2013 provided by MOST.
Note: The total monthly amount paid in benefits is not accurate since in the database there is missing information on benefit amounts and gender for some recipients.

Less than 1 year 99 7% 1-2 years 3-5 years 6-10 years 11-20 years More than 20 years 224 17% 275 21% 219 17% 397 30% 113 9% 100% Total 1,327 100% 7% 24% 45% 62% 91% regions The distribution of the monthly benefit amounts across the distribution of beneficiaries.
Accordingly, the largest amounts go to Castries (31per cent), Soufriere (15%), Dennery (10%) and Laborie (10per cent) (see Table 4-29).

follows Table 4-29: Total monthly amounts of PAP per region, 2013 Region Total monthly amount % Source: Authors’ own calculations based on the PAP Access database for 2013 provided by MOST.

Note: The total number of beneficiaries in this table does not correspond to the total number of PAP beneficiaries since there is missing information in the records of some recipients.
Anse la Raye Babonneau for standard monthly benefit amount The public assistance, received by 80 per cent of the beneficiaries, was $215 in 2013.

Twelve per cent of the beneficiaries were entitled to a higher amount of $280 per month.
The maximum monthly benefit amount was $465, granted to about 1 per cent of recipients The larger share of monthly benefits were allocated to women (59 per cent), reflecting the higher share of women in the programme (57 per cent) as well as a slightly higher on average benefit amounts for women (Table 4-28).
Canaries Castries Choiseul Dennery Gros Islet Laborie Micoud Sourfriere Vieux Fort TOTAL 9,515 18,045 10,995 98,690 15,970 31,405 12,475 33,295 26,305 47,135 15,470 3% 6% 3% 31% 5% 10% 4% 10% 8% 15% 5% 319,300 100% Source: Authors’ own calculations based on the PAP Access database for 2013 provided by MOST.

Note: The total monthly amount paid in benefits is not accurate since in the database there is missing information on benefit amounts for some recipients.
Social Protection 89 Other programmes Apart from the PAP there are other programmes aimed at alleviating poverty.

For example, the Koudmen programme (KSL) of SSDF covered 496 poor households in 2013, providing services and, in some cases, cash benefits.

The PAP and the KSL programme employ different methods of targeting the poor.
PAP beneficiaries are selected based on assessment of their economic, social, and medical circumstances by welfare officers while the households targeted by KSL are identified through a proxy-means test based on the census from 2010.

Due to a lack of coordination between the two programmes it is not clear how many of the beneficiaries are registered in both, thus a calculation of the total number of poor persons covered is not available in this report.
The numerous ALMPs in Saint Lucia often have overlapping goals and target population.

There are ALMPs under different institutions (MOE, MOST, NICE) and there is no coordination between them.

Assessment of the degree to which spending on each of these programmes is progressive would be very useful for evidence-based policy reforms.

Unfortunately, such an assessment is not feasible containing without household information and participation in ALMPs.
income/consumption survey data on Discussion 4.6 This chapter leads to the following findings and some points for further discussion.

Child related social protection programmes between the ages of 20 and 40 years.

This is the age group most ALMPs are targeting with almost six times the budget that is allocated for social protection programmes for children.

•• The proper level and mechanism of targeting might be an issue.
Where the laptop programme might be justified for other reasons than social protection, the grounds for providing a once- off bursary to all children entering secondary school is more disputable.

With the same resources a better targeted programme could do much more to help children from poor and vulnerable families.

•• For programmes such as school feeding, the low per capita level of administration costs reveals that administration, including targeting, is performed in an efficient manner.
•• For most of the programmes information was not available to arrive at such conclusions.

This is an issue for further discussion for the Government of Saint Lucia.

Monitoring and evaluation need to be further improved.
Much information is collected and reported in the annual Education Digest and this is laudable, but for an adequate governance of the various programmes, including their coordination and, in particular, their scope to be complimentary more programme specific information needs to be collected from the administrations.

•• Cash transfers and other services that directly or indirectly benefit children •• Most of these programmes fall under the remit of the Ministry of Education.
This is for a good reason as one of the main objectives of these programmes is, and should be, the facilitation of free and universal basic education for children from poor and vulnerable families.

•• these level of overall spending on The programmes is low.

If Government is serious about its poverty alleviation objectives, more public resources should be channelled to some of these programmes (those which are most successful).
•• The overall spending on these programmes, 0.2 per cent of GDP, compared to, for example, 4.1 per cent for education or 1.1 per cent for ALMPs, is very low.

To put this into perspective, the number of Saint Lucians under the age 20 is almost equal to the number of Saint Lucians •• In general, social protection programmes in Saint Lucia suffer from insufficient clarity and focus in their objectives.

This very much pertains to the ALMPs but this also pertains to some of the services for households.
90 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA •• The transfer of public assistance to MOST has been a good decision.

It has created opportunities for a better coordination of efforts and resources.

MOST invests significant effort in improving monitoring and evaluation and continues to work on further improvements in its data collection and organization.
•• With respect to KSL, its multidimensional approach is crucial in addressing the often multi- faceted problems of disadvantaged households and individuals.

Efforts and resources can be targeted even better by focusing on households, and even female-headed households, rather than on individuals.

Moreover, the programme is expensive in its per capita spending – both in its programme expenditure and administration costs.

Hence, it is not a programme that could be rolled out on a large scale.
It might be feasible to build some of the successful elements into other programmes – notably public assistance.

•• BELFund and YEDP are rather expensive programmes, despite the fact that compliance (loan recovery ratios) are generally reasonable.

Both in their per capita programme expenditure and administration costs these programmes are costly.

This raises some questions as to whether the targeted beneficiaries cannot be assisted in less expensive ways.
Active labour market programmes - ALMPs •• ALMPs represent a major share of Government expenditure.

The total GDP share of expenditure for ALMPs is in the range of 0.5 and 0.9 per cent of GDP, and between 1.5 and 3 per cent of Government expenditure.

In fact, in terms of GDP share of spending on ALMPs Saint Lucia out-spends even more advanced industrial economies.
This, in combination with the earlier observation of low spending shares on other programmes, raises questions as to whether there is sufficient balance in public resource allocation across the entire spectrum of social protection.

•• In terms of current numbers of participants, the various ALMPs could absorb the entire unemployed youth population (aged 15 to 34 years).
This clearly overshoots the proper target as it may be expected that the majority of unemployed in any age category should be able to find its way into employment without any help from an employment agency.

•• It appears that a large number of these programmes are overshooting in terms of per capita spending on jobseekers.

This is an issue of cost-effectiveness.

Some of the programmes might achieve similar, if not better outcomes, with less costly instruments.
•• •• •• •• In general, it is difficult to attribute labour market outcomes to ALMP measures as there is no counterfactual (that is: what would the state of the labour market situation have been without the measure).

However, looking at youth unemployment rates over recent years, well above 30 per cent, it cannot be claimed that outcomes of the existing programmes are very good.
In line with the previous point, the wage levels paid in some of the programmes are high, relative to the level of subsistence and to the average market wages.

This adds to the attractiveness of the programme and makes it doubtful whether these programmes provide sufficient incentives to exit them or, in fact, to even start looking for a job independent of the programme.

Some of the programmes produce as an outcome the referral of a jobseeker to another programme.
Where in individual cases this might be justified, it should not be the main objective.

The main objective should be to empower participants to find and maintain a job that suits her/his motivation and qualifications.

There are too many ALMPs and too many administering agencies.

This leads to problems of overlap, duplication and coordination failures that the Government wants to address in the NSPP.

It would be useful to merge agencies and create something similar to a public employment service.
Social Protection 91 •• In line with the previous point, per capita administration costs could be significantly reduced if agencies with similar activities merged.

The Government should monitor these costs and fix them to ceilings.

•• Spending execution has much improved.

In earlier years, a significant amount of underspending was reported but in more recent years actual expenditure has been close to the approved budget.
•• It can be noted that the major programmes that SSDF administers have reduced expenditures in the most recent year.

The significantly exception is the Koudmen Sent Lisi (KSL) programme that has been rolled out from a pilot programme into a regular programme.

KPIs The KPIs table can be a model for annual data collection for the MOF.

It can be perceived as an elaboration of performance-based budgeting in the area of social protection spending and child protection spending.
The budget of MOST and SSDF •• share of non-specified expenditure, The itemized as ‘other costs’, is high.

This raises the question whether the budget applies the proper categories to be transparent, informative and relevant.

•• Capital expenditure is high, in particular for social transformation.

This is something one would not expect to find in an MDA that is responsible for social programmes.
•• Staff salaries on average are extremely high, more than twice the average level in the other ministries that were studied earlier.

In fact, there has been a boost in the total sum of salaries in 2010/11, which was not reflected in a similar increase in numbers of staff.

This clearly warrants further attention.


92 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA 5 Child Protection 48 48 The authors are grateful to Ms. Daphne Francoise, for the research assistance she provided in writing this chapter.

© UNICEF/ECA/(2015/Marcille Haynes) Saint Lucia has made a commitment to protect the rights of its children through the ratification of the CRC.

This commitment encompasses unequivocally the protection of children from all forms of abuse, exploitation and neglect.
This requires processes and measures to be in place to facilitate the needed support for abused children.

Establishing such processes requires the appropriate legislative contextualization so as to empower government establishments to protect and support abused and exploited children.

However, this has to be coupled with the financial means and budget appropriations so that these establishment can carry out their duties.
This chapter will begin with a short overview of issues relating to child protection in Saint Lucia; followed by a brief discussion on relevant legislation, and an overview of the programmes.

The child protection budget and KPIs are then presented, and the chapter is concluded with a brief discussion.

5.1 Short overview of child protection issues in Saint Lucia cases of child abuse and neglect.
Young women are particularly at risk, often being victims of incest, sexual exploitation and other forms of sexual abuse.

To give an indication of the numbers, the reported numbers of cases of child abuse in Saint Lucia are shown in Table 5-1.

However, it is reasonably assumed that the majority of cases of child abuse remain unreported (Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association , 2012).
Table 5-1: Reported victims of child abuse by gender Reported victims of child abuse, 2009 – 2011 Year 2009 2010 2011 Male victims 66 92 81 Female victims 166 147 173 Abuse and exploitation Available data from the relevant authorities clearly indicate that sexual abuse is often coupled with Total 232 239 254 Source: Saint Lucia MOH/Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA), 2012 Child Protection 93 Corporal punishment has not yet been illegalized in Saint Lucia.
Its acceptance seems to be expressed in the Children and Young Persons Act (1976), which grants “the right of any parent, teacher or other person having lawful control or charge of a child to administer reasonable punishment to him or her” (Section 5, 6).

Furthermore, the Education Act explicitly regulates corporal punishment in educational settings, stating that “(c)orporal punishment may be administered where no other punishment is considered suitable or effective” (Section 50, 1-4).
The Committee on the Rights of the Child recently noted efforts to address the issue of corporal punishment.

However, it reiterated its concern that corporal punishment is still seen as a lawful way of disciplining children which continues to be practised within the family, schools and institutions and is widely accepted in society.

It recommended that Government definitively amend its legislation to explicitly prohibit corporal punishment in the family, schools and institutions (CRC, 2014).
Youth (under 18) crime One of the main issues which is arguably inherent in the Saint Lucian legislation dealing with juvenile offenders is the age of criminal responsibility which remains unclear due to contradicting statements in legislation.
The Criminal Code provides that a person of twelve years of age and under sixteen years of age could be held criminally responsible (unless she/he is not of sufficient maturity of understanding to enable her/him to appreciate the nature and consequences of her/his conduct in respect of which she/he is accused) (article 26 -Saint Lucia Criminal Code, 2004), thus 16 and 17-year- old children may be tried and sentenced as adults.
In its report, the CRC Committee raised concerns about the issue of age, in addition to other related matters such as truancy and vagrancy continuing to be classified as status offences; the increase in children engaging in more serious criminal activities and insufficient access to adequate and effective rehabilitation services (CRC, 2014).

With regards to sexual abuse of children, actual data on the reported number of cases is not available.
However, the joint research project “Road to Geneva” carried out by six Saint Lucian NGO’s sheds light on the general perception of the threat of sexual abuse among children.

Of the 580 young respondents between the age of 11 and 17, 21 per cent of respondents indicated that they never, rarely or sometimes felt safe from sexual abuse while 62.1 per cent always felt safe from sexual abuse (Road to Geneva, 2011).

Further disaggregation by gender type was not available.
As for child labour, the Government has made several efforts to address the problem, such as adopting the amended Labour Act of 2006, which increased the minimum age for employment to 15 as well as supporting after school programmes for underprivileged youth.
Despite these efforts, however, a recent report by the US department of Labour indicated that children are reported to be engaged in dangerous activities in agriculture as well as in perilous work on the streets, but specific information on hazards is unknown (USDOL, 2013).

While the percentage of working children is not significant per se (see accompanying report on child well-being), it is a reality and its existence obliges more effort towards its elimination.
Violence and corporal punishment Domestic violence seems to be a prevalent phenomenon within Saint Lucian households.

Analysis of MICS4 data reveals that approximately 40 per cent of all children have been subject to harsh discipline at home, which is used as a proxy for domestic violence in this report (see accompanying report on child well-being).
A 2006 publication by UNICEF indicates that corporal punishment is an accepted method of punishment of children for bad behaviour, which is applied more often to younger than to older children (UNICEF, 2006).
A more recent social survey which was conducted in 2014, ‘Attitudes to Corporal Punishment, Child Sexual Abuse and Domestic Violence’, found that 36 per cent of respondents did not perceive shaking/ throwing children as corporal punishment and 36 per cent did not consider that kicking, punching or burning a child to be corporal punishment (UNICEF, 2014).
94 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Existing legislation49 The 1993 ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) initiated and still creates the headway for achieving basic rights of children in Saint Lucia.

Since then, the Government of Saint Lucia has been attempting to increase its emphasis on issues relating to child protection.
Since 1993 a number of acts and legislative measures have been developed to empower the Division of Human Services and Family Affairs to protect, support and improve the status of children and families from violence and abuse in any form (UNICEF, 2015).

In order to move closer towards international standards, important statutes continue to be revised with the aim of protecting children against child abuse and offering young offenders alternative judicial procedures (UNICEF, 2006)50.
The major legal instruments which deal with child protection include: Additionally, the Saint Lucia Family Court, which is part of the districts court system and the only court with a social support section, deals with child protection-related matters, including youth crime, domestic violence, maintenance, custody, visitation rights and care and protection.
Overview of programmes51 5.2 In the following section, six child protection programmes offered by the government of Saint Lucia and targeted at children who are victims of abuse or neglect and/or displaying behavioural problems and young offenders are discussed.
These programmes are: •• New Beginning Transit Home; •• Upton Gardens Girls Centre; •• The Saint Lucia Children and Young Persons Act (revised 2001) •• Foster Care and Adoption Programme; •• The Saint Lucia Family Court Act ( revised 1994) •• Earning Act 1996 •• The Saint Lucia Criminal Code of 1957 (revised 1992 and 2003) •• Saint Lucia Domestic violence Act of 1995 (revised 2005) •• The Draft Protocol for the Management of Child Abuse and Neglect in Saint.
Lucia, developed by the Division of Human Services and Family Affairs in April 2008.

49 For a recent overview of the current legislation relating to child protection refer to the June-2014 report of the committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC, 2014).
50 Additionally, Saint Lucia has ratified the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict, in 2014, the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, in 2013; the United Nations Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime, in 2013; and the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime, in 2013.
•• Boys Training Centre (BTC); •• Bordelais Correction Facility; and •• Court Diversion Programme.

Besides the child protection programmes listed above, there are a number of other institutions protecting the safety and the rights of children in Saint Lucia.

These include: •• Child Labour Inspection; •• Birth Registration; •• The Vulnerable Persons Unit (VPU) of the Royal St. Lucia Police Force; and •• National Emergency Management Organization (NEMO).
51 Programmes in the areas of education of children and skill programmes for adolescents are also offered by the Government.

A discussion on these programmes, designed for children but not falling under child protection, can be found in Chapter 4– “Social Protection”.

Child Protection 95 Figure 5-1 shows the various social protection and child protection programmes in Saint Lucia.

The child protection programmes have been highlighted in red.
Programmes with a broader target population and objectives, but with a child protection component, have been indicated in white.

Figure 5-1: Social protection and child protection programmes in Saint Lucia.
Level 1: Ministries Ministry of Finance Ministry of Education Ministry of Labour Ministry of Social Transformation Ministry of Health Other Ministries (Justice + Legal Affairs, Home Affairs) Level2: Administering Agencies Level 3: Programmes for children: School Feeding child protection programmes Bursaries After School Child Labour Inspection School Transportation BTC Human Services (Transit Home) Human Services (Upton Gardens Girls Home) Bonderly Correction Facility Human Services (Foster Care) CDP Birth Registration Police VPU NEMO (Emergencies + disasters) Source: Author’s compilation 5.2.1 Child protection programmes - Ministry of Health The Ministry of Health, Wellness, Human Services and Gender Relations is the ministry responsible for children in residential care, as well as foster care.
Two residential care facilities available to children who are in need are briefly described below52, the New Beginnings Transit Home which caters for children up 17 years of age (UNICEF 2015), the Upton Gardens Girls Centre which caters for girls between the ages of 12-16 and the Foster Care and Adoption Programme, serving children up to 17 years of age.
Within the Ministry of Health, Wellness, Human Services and Gender Relations the Division of 52 Holy Family Children’s home is also a residential home which collaborates closely with the Division of Human Services in its efforts to find suitable families for the children in care.

It is a privately managed facility.


96 the psychosocial Human Services is responsible for the enhancement of functioning of children (among other groups) through advocacy, research, counselling and other social work, which focus on family preservation and the provision of skills for self-empowerment (MOH, 2014a).

New Beginnings Transit Home The home caters for children who are victims of severe child abuse and neglect.
Table 5-2 shows the number of new beneficiaries being housed by the institution in the period 2011-2014.

The largest number of admissions occurred in 2011, when the home opened its doors, followed by 2013.

The number of female admissions was double that of the number of male admissions at the transit home.

For the period from 2011-2014, females accounted for 68 per cent of all admissions, compared to 32 per cent for males.
BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Upton Gardens Girls Centre The center’s focus group consists of underprivileged, abused, neglected or abandoned teenage girls between 12 and 16 years of age.

Girls can only become part of the programme on a voluntary basis and are never forced to do so.

Numbers of new beneficiaries housed by the centre are shown in Table 5-2.
Foster care and adoption programme The main objective of this programme is to provide alternative placements for children in need of care and protection.

These children usually suffer from child abuse, neglect and abandonment, or death of a parent or primary caregiver.

There are approximately 85 registered foster carers; A total of 120 children are in foster care - ages range from a few months to 17 years; the majority of children are female (MOH, 2009).

Table 5-2 shows the admitted number each year.


Table 5-2: Number of new beneficiaries of different centres/programmes 2009-2014 Name of centre/programme 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Year The New Beginnings Transit Home - - Upton Gardens Girls’ Centre Boys Training Centre Foster Care and Adoption Programme 19 13 6 20 29 10 33 19 30 40 16 15 37 12 33 15 31 32 Source: Ministry of Health, Division of Human Services and Family Affairs.

Note: Total amount of children admitted each year.


5.2.2 Child protection programmes - the 5.2.3 Child protection programmes - Ministry of Social Transformation, Local Government and Community Empowerment Ministry of SHome Affairs and National Security Boys Training Centre (BTC) The Boys Training Centre accommodates boys in conflict with the law and those in need of care and protection.

During the period 2009-2013 a total of 140 boys were admitted to the centre, see Table 5-2 above.
Under the Children and Young Persons Act a young boy is to be detained for the following reasons: - care and protection, committing an offence, and remand pending trial.

The offences for which boys were detained included stealing, assault, wounding, possession of drugs, and trespassing.

The most common offence over the five year period was stealing, which accounted for 59.6 per cent of all offences.

Wounding accounted for 11.8 per cent of all offences (UNICEF 2015).
Bordelais Correction Facility The Bordelais Correction Facility, which falls under the competence of the Ministry of Home Affairs and National Security, is the only prison in Saint Lucia with a capacity to house 450 prisoners.

Besides adult offenders it houses young persons from 16 to 18 years old who were given custodial sentences.

Numbers of beneficiaries are shown in Table 5-3 .

Boys account for a greater proportion of children in detention, when compared to girls.
Of the 63 children detained at the Bordelias Correctional Facility, 97 per cent (61) were males and 3 per cent (2) were females.

One female was detained at the prison in both 2011 and 2013.

In 2012 there were no girls resident in the prison system (UNICEF 2015).
Child Protection 97 Table 5-3: Number of institutionalized children in the Bordelais Correction Facility 2006-2011 Number of beneficiaries Year Age 2006/07 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 16 17 18 Total 1 7 11 19 5 13 8 26 6 10 7 23 7 15 8 30 8 9 11 28 Source: Ministry of Home Affairs and National Security.

Total amount of children housed in each year.

resources relating to the rights of the child throughout the country.
Additionally, it urged the Government of Saint Lucia to provide the NACPC with sufficient authority and adequate human, technical and implement financial and coordinate comprehensive, coherent and consistent child rights policies at all levels and to assess the impact of such policies and programmes on children’s rights, including the development and implementation of the National Plan of Action for Children (CRC, 2014, p. 4).
to effectively The child protection budget 5.3 As can be deduced from Figure 5-1, Child protection is scattered over various Ministries.

The child protection programmes administered by the Human Services department are under the Ministry of Health and The Boys Training Centre is under the Ministry of Social Transformation.

Other programmes are under various other MDAs (Home Affairs, Legal Affairs, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Supreme Court).
Table 5-4 overleaf indicates that 1.2 per cent of Government revenue was allocated to child protection programmes in 2013/2014 – this corresponds to 0.3 per cent of GDP.

Over the past five years the budget for child protection has been rather stable, in real terms.

Since 2008/09, the budget share in GDP has fluctuated around 0.3 percentage points.
Court Diversion Programme is aimed at The Court Diversion Programme children and young persons from 12 to 19 years old who are probationers, juveniles, chronic school suspenders or school drop outs.

The programme fell under the ambit of the Probation and Parole Services Department of the Ministry of Home Affairs and National Security.

However, due to financial constraints the programme was closed 31st March, 2014.
The Department of Probation and Parole Services has not been able to re-institute this programme to date (UNICEF, 2015).

For the period 2011-2014 there were 63 referrals to the diversion programme and of this number 65 per cent of the referrals were males and 35 per cent females (UNICEF, 2015).
5.2.4 The National Action Child Protection Committee The National Action Child Protection Committee (NACPC) which was established 2012 has the coordinating body been designated as for governmental bodies and civil society in implementing the CRC, aimed at improving the coordination of all agencies serving children and for pooling of dedicated resources for CRC implementation and rights-based approaches of individual agencies (RISE (Saint Lucia) Inc., 2011).
The CRC committee report, however, explicitly stated that it is concerned that the NACPC lacks a clear mandate, and the necessary authority and resources to effectively carry out its role as the permanent monitoring and evaluation mechanism with respect to all laws, policies and programmes 98 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 5-4: Budget allocations child protection 2009/10-2013/14 in constant (2012/13) prices Programme budget (revenues) in 1,000 EC$ Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2009/10 to 2013/14 (Child Protection) BTC 1,642 10,594 2,783 2,243 2,737 Transit home (Human Services) 82 405 1,581 1,163 1,189 Upton Gardens Girls School (Human Services) 2,656 1,883 3,038 3,265 3,671 Foster care (Human Services) - - - - - CDP - 2,805 3,224 957 626 BCF (Bordelais Correction Facility) 12,352 12,361 12,823 14,717 14,250 BCF, attributed to ages 16-18 population 568 742 718 883 855 Police VPU NEMO Birth registration Labour Relations Department (child labour inspectorate) 329 298 303 433 446 507 526 715 660 672 1,327 1,150 1,020 1,275 1,265 413 434 452 402 378 Total budget child protection 6,368 17,836 12,546 9,930 10,495 (% government revenue) (% GDP) 0.7% 0.2% 1.9% 0.5% 1.3% 0.3% 1.0% 0.3% 1.2% 0.3% 13.6 95.2 8.4 -39.3 3.6 10.8 7.9 7.3 -1.2 -2.2 13.3 Source: Authors’ Calculations on the basis of information received from the programme administrations Table 5-5 indicates that expenditure on staff salaries has increased over time.
Expenditure per staff is close to 40,000 EC$ – this is well below average salary levels in the health and education sectors, around 65,000 and 50,000 EC$ respectively.

In the annex to this report, more detailed information can be found on specific budget allocations and numbers of staff of the various child protection programmes.
Table 5-5: Information on child protection staff 2009/10-2013/14 in constant prices Child protection funded staff 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 BTC Transit home (Human Services) NEMO BCF Court Diversion Programme Police VPU Birth registration Total funded staff Total staff expenditure in 1,000 EC$ Expenditure per staff in EC$ Child Protection 99 results Programme and administrative expenditure The spread of programmes for child protection across ministries, in difficulties with comprehensive analysis of child protection programme expenditures, as not all the information is available.
For several child protection programmes information was received on programme and administrative expenditure.

This was the case for the BTC and the three programmes administered under Human Services (Transit Home, Upton Gardens and Foster Care).

The following tables provide information on these expenditure categories; in as far as information is available.
Table 5-6 shows a 13.6 per cent annual growth in real expenditure on the BTC in 2010/11 when expenditure was exceptionally high due to capital expenditure, but this is not reflected in the trend.

For most child protection programmes, however, real expenditure decreased between 2009/10 and 2013/14.

The trend in total expenditure is perhaps misleading because it does not factor in the fact that the transit homes were not included in the 2009/10 figure.
Table 5-6: Child protection expenditure per programme in EC$ 1000 in constant (2012/13) prices Expenditure in 1,000 EC$ Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2009/10 to 2013/14 (Child Protection) BTC Transit home (Human Services) Upton Gardens Girls School (Human Services) Foster care (Human Services) CDP BCF (Bordelais Correction Facility) 1,642 10,594 2,783 2,243 2,737 13.6 - 1,182 1,324 1,155 1,146 335 361 351 337 298 18 18 17 500 16 - - - - - -1.0 -2.8 -2.8 12,352 12,361 12,823 14,717 14,250 BCF, attributed to ages 16-18 population 568 742 718 883 855 10.8 Police VPU NEMO Birth registration Labour Relations Department (child labour inspectorate) Total expenditure child protection (% government expenditure) (% GDP) 329 298 303 433 446 507 526 715 660 672 1,327 1,150 1,020 1,275 1,265 -1.2 413 434 452 402 378 3,947 14,252 6,305 6,487 6,411 12.9 0.4% 0.1% 1.3% 0.4% 0.5% 0.2% 0.5% 0.2% 0.5% 0.2% Source: Authors’ Calculations on the basis of information received from the programme administrations 100 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Expenditure per child per year in the BTC lies at around 90,000 EC$ which is well above spending per child in the Transit Home and Upton Gardens Girls School.
The high level of programme spending in the BTC is related to a high staff:student ratio (around 1:1).

For BTC and Transit Home, information was received on their administrative costs.

In particular for the Transit Home, these represent a substantial share of total costs (around 36 per cent).

Administrative costs per child per year range between 12,000 and 20,000 EC$ and are around three times higher than administrative costs per child in the BTC (see Table 5-7 and Table 5-8 below).
Table 5-7: Child protection expenditure/beneficiary in EC$ in constant (2012/13) prices Expenditure/beneficiary in EC$ Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (Child Protection) BTC Transit home (Human Services) 126,298 365,294 92,768 88,305 40,133 72,189 34,735 Upton Gardens Girls School (Human Services) 17,606 18,037 18,475 22,463 19,883 Foster care (Human Services) 3,021 1,756 427 41,667 505 2009/10 to 2013/14 -8.6 -7.0 3.1 CDP BCT 24,704 24,723 25,646 - - 1.9 - Source: Authors’ calculations on the basis of information received from the programme administrations Table 5-8: Child protection programmes administration cost overview in EC$ 1,000 in constant (2012/13) prices 53 Administration cost in 1,000 EC$ Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (Child Protection) BTC 101 106 108 3.8 - Transit home (Human Services) 464 564 519 -2.8 414 Administration cost as a percentage of total cost Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 (Child Protection) BTC Transit home (Human Services) Administration cost per child/year in EC$ (Child Protection) BTC 6.1 1.0 3.9 - 47.8 39.2 36.1 Actual Revised Estimates 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 7,732 3,653 3,602 - Transit home (Human Services) 15,735 26,132 12,546 Source: Authors’ calculations on the basis of information received from the programme administrations 53 No information on Upton Gardens Girls School, Foster Care or CDP Child Protection 101 the existing 5.4 Assessment of child protection initiatives What can be concluded from the data available in reports on child protection (Immigration Law Practitioners‘ Association, 2012; Armstrong, 2012; United States Department of Labor’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs , 2012) is that child abuse (sexual and physical, as well as neglect) is an issue of concern in Saint Lucia (see Table 5-9).
Although the figures of reported victims of child abuse differ slightly between the reports, it can be stated that about 250 cases of abuse have been reported annually since 2009.

The assessment of child well-being in Chapter 3 of this report confirms that forms of harsh discipline are often used at home, indicating that more efforts in the direction of protection from violence and abuse are necessary.
The institutions available for protection in Saint Lucia are the Boys Training Centre, the Upton Gardens Girls Centre and the Transit Home.

They all host boys, girls and women/mothers with children respectively for different periods of time, and offer shelter, counselling and other related services.

There is no evidence whether the number of places in these institutions corresponds to the needs and whether the services provided are adequate.
However, some criticism of the institutions can be expressed, for example the fact that the Boys Training Centre accommodates victims of violence together with boys in conflict with the law is not well accepted.

An in-depth research of the child protection sector and all its services would be useful to inform policy development with respect to the institutions mentioned.
Table 5-9: Reported cases of child abuse and neglect in Saint Lucia Year Sexual Neglect Verbal Physical Total Females 1997 2001 13 42 22 64 0 4 18 53 n.a.

64 174 n.a.

2003 100 75 17 80 272 n.a.

2007 106 46 n.a.

59 211 n.a.

2008 2009 2010 2011 74 97 76 87 49 n.a.

67 190 n.a.

99 n.a.

59 255 n.a.

62 25 82 245 147 64 5 100 256 173 Source: Saint Lucia Child Development Project Draft Report (Armstrong, 2012), provided by the Human Services Division.
According to a report on child labour from 2012, Saint Lucia has not undertaken efforts to address the worst forms of child labour.

The report criticizes the absence of data on child labour and the lack of research in this area.

Our analysis of child well-being, based on the representative Multiple-Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) from 2012, showed that child labour as defined by the UNICEF and the ILO is very rare on the island, almost non-existent.

Of course, single cases do exist.


The agencies responsible for child labour law enforcement are the MOE and the MOH.

Workplace inspections, including those concerned with child labour, are conducted by the Department of Labour within the MOE.

However, it is unclear what budget is spent for child labour inspections.
Another department concerned with child protection in Saint Lucia is the Vulnerable Persons Unit of the Royal Saint Lucia Police Force, responsible for investigation of all cases of child abuse and neglect, including child labour.

The number of children in conflict with the law in Saint Lucia is displayed in Table 5-10.

The most common offenses are violence and theft.

The majority of children charged are boys.
102 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 5-10: Children in conflict with the law Total # charged Gender Nature of offenses Male Female Acts of violence Theft Drug abuse Other 27 24 38 17 22 22 36 17 5 2 2 0 15 (32%) 18 (44%) 24 (41%) 13 (54%) 14 (30%) 12 (29%) 15 (26%) 5 (21%) 15 (32%) 4 (10%) 5 (9%) 3 (12%) 3 (6%) 7 (17%) 14 (29%) 3 (12%) Year 2007 2008 2009 2010 Source: Saint Lucia Child Development Project Draft Report (Armstrong, 2012), provided by the Human Services Division.
As mentioned above, the institution hosting boys in conflict with the law as well as boys in need of care and protection is the Boys Training Centre (BTC).

In 2013, the BTC admitted 7 offenders and 18 boys in need of care and protection (see Figure 5-2: Charged children by gender ).
Figure 5-2: Charged children by gender t n e c r e P 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Total Male Female 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 Year Source: Saint Lucia Child Development Project Draft Report (Armstrong, 2012), provided by the Human Services Division.
Child Protection 103 Table 5-11: Children in the Boys Training Centre (BTC) Care and protection (C&P) Year 6-12 mths 12-24 mths 24-36 mths Over 36 mths Total C&P In conflict with the law (CWL) Re- mand 6-12 mths 12-24 mths 24-36 mths Total CWL Total C&P + CWL 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2007- Source: Saint Lucia Child Development Project Draft Report (Armstrong, 2012), provided by the Human Services Division.
Table 5-12: Boys admitted to (BTC) Year CWL C&P Total Admitted 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 8 9 15 12 7 4 7 18 18 28 18 15 27 33 40 25 5 *until July 2014 Source: Boys Training Centre (BTC) 104 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Key performance indicators Table 5-13: KPIs for social programmes in child protection Child protection Boys Training Centre Bordelais Transit Home Family and Child Care Court DIversion Upton Gardens 31 28 33 103 82 15 Performance indicators for social programmes Programme Name Coverage (general) Number of beneficiaries Number of potential beneficiaries Coverage rate (beneficiaries) as a percentage Coverage gap (exclusion error) Coverage (gender responsive) Gender coverage rate (per cent) - 68.9 100.0 Coverage (youth responsive) Youth coverage rate (per cent) Performance indicators for social programmes (financial) Financing 100.0 53.8 100.0 100.0 Child protection Annual revenue (EC$ 1,000) 2,778 868 1,206 965 635 3,725 Subsidy chare Grant share Anual expenditure (EC$1,000) 2,778 868 1,163 642 303 Benefit share (programme cost) Administration cost ratio (expenditure) Administration cost ratio (revenue) Annual balance Total number of staff Ratio of staff to users Share of front-line staff Administration cost (EC$ 1,000) 0.04 0.04 0 36 1.16 0.92 112 0 0.36 0.35 43 420 323 3,422 15 0.18 0.87 Administration cost per staff member 3,111 Note: where information was available 2013/14 was used as base for the table, in some cases data were only available for older years.
Discussion 5.5 Due to data limitations, the current analysis is limited in its capacity to present a thorough assessment of the adequacy, coverage and distribution of beneficiaries and spending for child protection, especially when it comes to analysis of progressiveness of the spending.

Such an assessment requires a representative survey containing data on beneficiaries of child protection services together with household/individual wealth.
Unfortunately, since this kind of information is not available and the data provided to us by the Division of Human Services of the MOH is only secondary, it is difficult to make any meaningful interpretations of the impact of spending for child protection.

Child Protection 105 allocation is sufficient to carry out the inspection properly thus undermining its effectiveness.
Clarity of objectives and coordination There is a lack of clarity over child protection objectives and coordination on a national level which can also be revealed from reviewing the available information on child protection.
While a lot of effort has been made by various actors, and it is continuously mentioned that there is a commitment towards improving child protection, there seems to be no clear overarching document which commits all responsible stakeholders jointly to advancing the situation of child protection in Saint Lucia.
The establishment of the NACPC has been a step in that direction as mentioned in the previous section; however NACPC lacks a clear mandate, and the necessary authority and resources to effectively carry out an effective coordinating role.

Therefore, the matter of organization and coordination must be addressed where roles, responsibilities and accountabilities are clearly defined.
How to move ahead From the information that was obtained, it can be argued that the key risk areas facing children in Saint Lucia are the issues of corporal punishment and poverty.

Therefore it is pertinent that these two areas receive priority when considering a future undertaking of primary data collections.

While it is also important to identify additional data needs on less visible themes, these two key areas can be a place to start.
Better data, coupled with the Government’s commitment, will pave the way for child protection programmes to receive the required financial necessities.

Structured support to child protection programs of the three respective ministries would be a step in this direction.

There has to be a resolute and serious undertaking in the planning element when thinking about budgets or budget items which involve child protection schemes and programmes.
This has to be approached systemically and with a preventive future outlook.

Inability to give an accurate assessment Saint Lucia’s first UN CRC NGO Report to United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child, highlighted in its 2011 report the lack of sufficient financial resources for CRC implementation.

With that said and considering what was mentioned in this chapter, it is still very difficult to give an accurate assessment of budget needs of children.
Such an assessment is needed to allocate adequate resources for the implementation of child protection measures.

Insufficient data (including disaggregated data) is also a concern, and without having the necessary budget data information, it is difficult to assess whether the allocations match the needs and rights of the children.
Without having a comprehensive picture of how the allocation proportions were actually spent, it is not possible to know how far the commitments made to children’s rights through policy and programmes are being translated into reality.

The concern of a decreasing budget What has been mentioned so far is also hindered by the issue of the decreasing budget.
While the commitment for enforcing child protection measures is emphasized by the government, the budget for child protection has decreased, even more so in relative terms in the recent years (with expenditure on staff salaries increasing over time).

The actual allocation in the budget for child protection programmes is a critical test of the commitment to uphold the rights of children, especially at a time when funds are tight and demand is rising.
The overall spending on the child protection programme is rather meagre.

No clear budgetary allocation for child protection programmes In the absence of clear budgetary allocations for child protection it is difficult to collect information and ensure that continual monitoring of policies for protection of children‘s rights is taking place.

it was unclear through budget For example examination what budget is spent for inspections for child labour, which has a very important role in combating child labour.
This creates a challenge for effective inspection, as it is not clear whether the 106 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA 6 Health Care The Convention of the Rights of Children calls upon governments to ensure that children survive and develop themselves in good health (Art.

6) and to set the conditions for this through the establishment and maintaining of a system of good quality health care (Art.

24).
24).

This chapter focuses on health with a particular focus on health for children, starting with a brief overview of conditions and trends in health and health services in Saint Lucia, regulations and governance pertaining to health and an overview of health programmes, and then goes into an in- depth discussion of the health budget, which is complemented with an assessment of health benefits.

The chapter concludes with its main findings and recommendations .
© UNICEF/ECA/(2014) Before starting, perhaps, a caveat on data limitations is in place.

There are no age specific health care utilization statistics in Saint Lucia.

This severely affects the depth of the analysis provided in this chapter.

The Ministry of Health works on an improved information system.
However, at the time the research for this report was conducted this system was not in place and it proved only possible to disclose gender/age utilization profiles in a number of primary health care facilities.

Overview of health conditions 6.1 Figure 6-1 shows that birth rates have come down since 2001.

The infant mortality rate has increased since 2001, when 13.3 infants died per 1,000 live births, to 20.2 infants in 2012.
The Saint Lucia Social and Economic Review (2008) attributes this to changing lifestyles, creating complications for pre- and post-natal care.

Health Care 107 Figure 6-1: Birth, death and infant mortality ratios for Saint Lucia, 2001–2012 25.0 20.0 15.0 10.0 5.0 0.0 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 Source: GOSL (2013a).

Note: Estimates for 2012 are preliminary.

In 2012, 2,006 children were born, of which 1,009 were boys and 997 girls (CSO, 2014).
Close to 15 per cent are births from adolescent54 mothers (CSO, 2014).

Around 10 per cent of children had a low birth weight.

Saint Lucia’s maternal mortality rate is relatively low at 34 deaths per 100,000 births55, especially if compared to other countries in the Caribbean.56 In line with birth rates, fertility rates have declined significantly compared to the 1960’s (6.7 in the early 1960s to 1.9 in 2009).

In 2011 and 2012, the fertility rate was estimated at 1.5 (CSO, 2013).
This drop is partly attributed to the delay of first pregnancies as a result of increased education for women, family planning interventions, and increased socioeconomic status (Rodriguez et al., 2012).

Although teen births have decreased significantly over the years, adolescent pregnancy remains a challenge for the country57.

Saint Lucia takes an average position in a regional comparison of fertility rates (see Figure 6-2 overleaf ).

54 Ages 15-19 yrs.
54 Ages 15-19 yrs.

55 The average maternal mortality ratio in developing countries in 2013 ranges from 230 per 100,000 live births to 16 per 100,000 live births in developed countries (WHO, 2014).

56 In St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the maternal mortality ratio was 45 in 2013, and in Trinidad and Tobago it was 84.

In Grenada, this mortality ratio is 23 (WHO, n.d.-b).
57 In 2009, the adolescent fertility rate was 59.5 births per 1,000 women aged 15-19, which is below the Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) average of 72.5, but well above the average 28.6 births per 1,000 for an upper middle- income country (Rodriguez et al., 2012).
108 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Figure 6-2: Fertility rates in the Caribbean, 2011 (in births per woman) 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0. .

t S a i c u L .

t S e h T , Source: The World Bank (n.d.).

Note: The fertility rate is the number of births per woman.
Life expectancy in Saint Lucia is relatively high compared to the region (see Figure 6-3).

In 2011, life expectancy stood at 74.6 years in Saint Lucia and has increased by approximately six years since 1980.

In 2014, total (male and female) life expectancy stood at 75.2 years according to CSO (2014).
Figure 6-3: Life expectancy at birth, Caribbean Region, 1980 and 2011 (in years) 2011 1980 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Haiti Trinidad and Tobago St. Vincent and the Grenadines Grenada St. Lucia Bahamas, The Barbados Antigua and Barbuda Source: The World Bank (n.d.) 6.2 Governance, policies and planning The Public Health Act was revised in 2001 and this established the role of the MOH.

Most other Acts related to health care in Saint Lucia were also revised over the past one-and-a-half decade.
Health sector reform has been a MOH priority since the late 1990s.

Two major initiatives stand out: Universal Health Care (UHC) through national health insurance and the National Health Strategic Plan (NHSP).

Not much progress has been achieved on either.


The aim of Government in terms of universal coverage is to achieve a package of essential health services, including health promotion, disease prevention, and curative, and rehabilitative health interventions, that are considered fundamental to Health Care 109 achieving equity in the delivery and use of health care services (PAHO, 2012).

However, the details of how such a plan would be financed are still under discussion.
6.3 Overview of programmes 6.3.1 Health services and professionals There are three main levels of health care services in Saint Lucia: Health centers (primary care), polyclinics (primary care support and community secondary care services with extended hours) and hospitals (secondary and limited tertiary care services).
The public health sector is organized into eight health regions delivering services through a combination of health centres, district hospitals, a polyclinic, pharmacies, and two general hospitals (Rodriguez, M. et al., 2012).

Table 6-1 shows patient visits to the clinics and utilization of primary health care (PHC) services in 2013.

Females make up 63.1 per cent of the visits.


Children of ages 0-5 account for almost 20 per cent of the visits, while children aged 5-15 account for 7.6 per cent of the clinic visits.

Table 6-1: Clinic attendance of primary health care services, 201358 Clinic attendance No.
of visits Percentage of total Percentage of total population Males Females Total 26,070 44,565 37.9% 63.1% 49.6% 50.4% 70,655 100.0% 100.0% Ages 0-5 14,077 19,9% Ages 5-15 Ages15-65 Ages 65+ 5,364 38,082 13,132 7.6% 53.9% 18.6% 6.5% 15.3% 69.5% 8.7% Total 70,655 100.0% 100.0% Source: Ministry of Health (2014a).

More advanced secondary care (SHC) and very limited tertiary care are delivered at the three hospitals on the island.
The occupancy rates and average length of stay at both St. Jude and Victoria hospitals indicate that the facilities’ inpatient services are underutilized (Rodriguez et al., 2012).

Table 6-2 shows patient visits and utilization for Victoria Hospital in 2010/11.

With respect to utilization statistics a caveat need to be made.
Government is working on generating reliable data on utilization, and with this objective, a Health Information System (HIS) is anticipated to facilitate the coordination and management of the health sector.

While the reporting of service statistics is common practice at the primary care level in Saint Lucia, hospitals do not report their service data centrally.
Apart from primary health care utilization hospitals do not report the number of admissions and the discharge diagnosis in summary form to the MOH (Musau et al., 2013, p. 21).

This, however, is a work in progress and currently the Health Information System (HIS) cannot provide comprehensive information on patients and utilization.
For example, to date the system is not operational in all health-care facilities and even where it has been launched 59, it appears that not all health professionals use the system.

Therefore, since the HIS is in its initial phase and given that there are still existing inefficiencies, the data currently available through the system should be taken with caution.

The records are often not full and utilization of some services may be underestimated.
On average for all departments, the occupancy rate for Victoria Hospital was 63 per cent.

When compared to international occupancy rates this occupancy rate is considered low (Tareq, Simone, del Granado, & Kapsoli, 2010).

The average length of stay is also been lower than international standards according to the same source.

58 Note: 20 people had an ‘indeterminant’ gender.

Population estimates for 2012 were used.


59 As of March 2013, 21 out of the 45 primary health care facilities have implemented the new HIS (Musau, Tayag, & Vogus, 2013, p. 21).
110 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 6-2: Patient visits and utilisation numbers for Victoria Hospital, 2010/2011 Cost centre General outpatient Outpatient specialty clinics Outpatient ophthalmology Accidents & emergency STI clinic Renal dialysis unit Sub-total outpatient Inpatient obstetrics Inpatient pediatrics Inpatient medical male wards Inpatient medical female ward Chest ward/TB Gynecology Inpatient surgical male ward Inpatient surgical female ward Neonatal unit Sub-total inpatient Total inpatient and outpatient Total expenditures 2010/11 Source: USAID (2012).
Visits (outpatient) and patient days (inpatient) Bed occupancy rate (%) Average length of stay (days) 6,799 2,136 n.a.

37,094 2,705 9,828 58,562 4,165 4,079 4,141 4,945 2,174 4,101 4,357 2,820 2,418 33,200 91,762 32,412,801 n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

36% 37% 71% 85% 40% 86% 80% 64% 55% 63% n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.


1.99 2.93 4.62 5.30 42.63 4.34 4.94 5.00 5.77 4.13 On the other hand, there are concerns with the functioning of the referral system in Saint Lucia, with patients seeking care at the hospital for minor conditions that can be treated at health clinics.

Hence, the hospital sector appears to be characterized by overutilization in out-patient care and at the same time underutilization in in-patient care.
Health care professionals Table 6-3 shows figures on public sector health personnel from the database of the Ministry of Health.

Unfortunately, the latest figures available date back to 2010.

In general the conclusion that can be drawn from this table is that the staff to population ratios in Saint Lucia are rather high, and this is also the case from an international perspective.
However, for some specialized needs the situation might be different as reflected in a Pan American Health Organization report (PAHO 2012).

This indicates that there is scope for improvement in the allocation of resources within the sector.
Health Care 111 Table 6-3: Health workers, by number, density and population covered per worker 2010 Category of health worker Medical doctors Nurses and midwives Allied nursing professionals Dentists and allied professionals Pharmacists and allied professionals Social workers Physiotherapists Technologists Nutritionists and allied professionals Environmental health officers and allied professionals Psychiatrists and psychologists Total Source: PAHO (2012).
Number of workers Density per 10,000 population Population per worker Medicines While nearly all residents of Saint Lucia must pay for medicines; affordability does not appear to be a major impediment to access.

The public health system in Saint Lucia does not deny services or essential medicines due to inability to pay.
The MOH has put programmes in place to ensure affordability of medications.

For example, individuals identified as indigent qualify for an exemption card, which gives the holder access to free medicines.

The exemption applies to all public sector pharmacies but many private sector pharmacies will exempt or reduce prices for these groups as well.

Diabetic and hypertensive patients receive free medications for their diabetes as well as for hypertension in the public sector.
A local distributor that supplies private pharmacies also offers reduced prices through an agreement with the MOH to purchase through the Pharmaceutical Procurement Service (PPS).

Table 6-4 shows the medicine exemptions for 2013.

The largest share of exemptions is classified as universal health care (UHC).

In 2013, the average prescription had a value of about EC$ 40.
112 Table 6-4: Medicine exemptions for 2013 Exemption type Amount in EC$ Number of prescriptions Percentage of total number of prescriptions No exemption 471,674 12,985 63.4% UHC 238,857 4,898 23.9% Social welfare 41,291 1,216 Other60 56,264 1,373 5.9% 6.7% Total 808,085 20,472 100.0% Source: Ministry of Health (2014b) 60 These include the categories Psychiatry, MSW, Community Health Aide’s, STI’s, Staff, Nurses, Police Officers, Fire Fighters, Prison Officers, Tuberculosis, End Stage Renal Disease, Ex Service Men, Comfort Bay for the Elderly, Soufriere Hospital Admin, ARV’s, Bordelais Correctional Facility, Hansen’s Disease, Marian Home and Victoria Hospital Admin.
Exemptions are made for the poor and essential public health and safety personnel such as nurses, police officers, and firefighters.

Individuals who suffer from certain diseases such as diabetes and hypertension are exempt from pharmaceutical fees (Tareq et al., 2010).

BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA In the MOH budget, primary care medication the central falls under procurement, under administration.

This dataset covers 95 per cent61 of the total procurement.
Patients pay the remainder of the medicines themselves, but these are only small parts of the total amounts (in the range of EC$5 -10 generally).

6.4 The health budget 6.4.1 Health care financing Health services in Saint Lucia are funded from four principal sources: the Consolidated Fund (part of the government budget), out-of-pocket payments, private insurance schemes, and donor contributions in (PAHO, 2012).

Health government-owned health facilities are funded from general tax revenues.
This is the main source of financing central government health expenditure.

Most capital expenditures are funded with external grants62.

services delivered User fees are charged for most hospital services unless the patient is exempt or covered by the National Insurance Corporation (NIC).

Exemptions are made for the poor and essential public health and safety personnel such as nurses, police officers and firefighters.
Individuals who suffer from certain diseases such as diabetes and hypertension are exempt from pharmaceutical fees.

Most services at the primary care level (health centres) are free, but user fees apply for select services such as contraceptives and some vaccinations.

In addition to public financing, private financing accounts for slightly less than half of total health spending according to WHO, which reflects the important health insurance sector in Saint Lucia (Tareq et al., 2010).
In 2012, 44 per cent of total health expenditures were private.

Besides health insurance, private financing by individual out-of- pocket payments is common in Saint Lucia.

With respect to private health expenditures (PvtHE), 99 61 Primary care centres can also procure.

If they do, they are not shown in this database and the costs fall under supplies.

In this database, five wellness centres and two district hospitals are missing.
62 External grant financing accounted for 72 per cent of all budgeted capital expenditures on average during 2007/08 – 2009/10.

Budget information was used instead of execution information as an approximation (Tareq et al., 2010) per cent of expenditures in Saint Lucia are out-of- pocket.

The NIC covers 50,000 formal sector workers, collecting a 10 per cent payroll tax on salaries (5 per cent from the employer, 5 per cent from the employee), up to 5,000 EC$ per month.
NIC also pays pension benefits to 4,000 retirees.

NIC covers maternity benefits, employment injury, short- and long-term disability, and pensions.

Although the focus of NIC is the provision of pensions and disability insurance, it currently pays 5 million EC$ annually to the MOH to cover hospital services provided to its members at Victoria Hospital and St. Jude Hospital.

However, dependents are not covered, hence spouses of NIC members (if not insured themselves) and their children are not covered.
The 5 million EC$ is a negotiated amount (recently increased from 3 million EC$) and is not based on actual billings to the NIC by the hospitals (Rodriguez et al., 2012).

The annual contribution, as mentioned, is designed to cover only active members and there is no NIC coverage for primary care expenditures, drug, or offshore medical care.

In return, the MOH waives hospital user fees for NIC-covered workers.
Private health insurance clients include individuals, small groups (3-9 employees) and larger groups (10+) in the financial, hotel, and manufacturing sectors.

In particular the larger enterprises – holding companies, financial institutions, international and local hotels – provide health insurance to their employees and dependents.

Rates vary for insured individuals, insured individuals plus one dependent and family coverage.
Companies in Saint Lucia cover the employee while the employee pays for her/his dependents.

Typical rates for a smaller group would be 108 EC$ per month for an individual and 272 EC$ per month for a family.

Group policies are, of course, cheaper, and do not require all members of a group to join.

There are some exceptions, such as a few locally owned hotel companies, where signing up for medical health insurance is a requirement of employment (Rodriguez et al., 2012).
respect to development partners, With the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) is a major crediting partner for Saint Lucia.

CDB contributed to the development of the electronic national health Health Care 113 management information system (HMIS), providing both funding and technical assistance through project management.

CDB has also facilitated the rehabilitation of 14 health centers, including components that will support the rollout of the national HMIS.

The EC is also a major funder.


The EC has financed the building of and equipment for the NNH and health sector reform studies in previous agreements under the European Development Fund (Rodriguez et al., 2012).

The United States Governments supports Saint Lucia health sector through the U.S.-Caribbean Regional HIV and AIDS Partnership Framework 2010-2014.

Saint Lucia is one of twelve Caribbean countries signed on to this Framework.
Most development partners working in Saint Lucia do so through regional mechanisms, such as donating to the CDB, or through UNDP (Rodriguez et al., 2012).

6.4.2 Methodology and data For this report, the Government of Saint Lucia’s budget estimates for the period 2009/10 – 2013/14 are used, for 2012/13 the revised budget figures and for 2013/14 the estimates, for the earlier FYs the actual outturns are used.

The estimates comprise recurrent expenditures, capital expenditures and revenues.
Table 6-5 provides the conversion for both the administrative and the economic classification.

The rationale for re-aligning the various items has been explained earlier in this report.

In the administrative classification, a newly introduced category called ‘central health administration’ consists of the old categories ‘agency administration’ and ‘corporate planning’.
Under these administrative it has been organized, where classifications, possible, into subcategories of administrative and medical expenditures.
114 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 6-5: Conversion table (MOHFN)63 Administrative classification Economic classification Central health administration Salaries Agency administration Corporate planning Personal emoluments Wages General hospitals Travel and subsistence Victoria Hospital St. Jude Hospital District hospitals Soufriere Hospital Dennery Hospital Rewards, compensation and incentives64 Training Goods and services Office and general expense Supplies and materials Drug, alcohol and rehab related Tools and Instruments Turning Point Utilities Substance Abuse Secretariat Operating and maintenance Human Services Senior Citizens Home Professional and consultancy services Advertising Primary Health Care Services Equipment Public Health Gros Islet Polyclinic Gender relations Mental health Hire of equipment Communication Capital - equipment Office costs Rental of Property Insurance Capital Other Miscellaneous Capital – programmes Grants and contributions65 Public assistance Source: Authors’ compilation costs’ ‘office (constructions The capital expenditures were either categorized under costs, rehabilitations, restorations, etc.
), under ‘equipment’ (medical equipment etc.)

or ‘other costs’ (projects like the malaria prevention projects etc.).

As much as possible, the original programmes were retained under which the capital expenditures were done.

Sometimes however, for fair comparison, programmes were moved.

For example in the case of Transit Home, the building costs were listed under Transit Home, instead of Human Services, under which it was listed initially, as Transit Home did not exist as a programme yet.
By copying the numbers in the Government estimates and adding up different categories according to our conversion table, the ‘new budget’ is derived.

The ‘new real budget’ forms the starting point for the following budget analysis.

63 The categories in bold are the new categories.

Any categories below the bold items are the categories as presented in the GOSL Estimates.
Procurement of 64 Includes Protection of Revenue, Agriculture Farming information Fees, Cost of Personal Property Damaged, Incentives to Agents, Examination Script Marking and Bonus payments 65 This includes Transfer Payments to Statutory Boards, Local, Regional and International Organisations Individual and Medical Assistance Health Care 115 6.4.3 Budget anaylsis A condensed version of the newly categorized, inflation corrected budget is presented in Table 6-6.
The first five columns give the expenditure per program in 1,000 EC$.

The final column presents the total of the ministries’ budget that has been allocated to that program in the years 2009-2014.

For example, 38.3 per cent of the total budget has been allocated to the Central Health Administration.

This category consisted of the categories ‘Agency Administration’ and ’Corporate Planning’ in the original budget.
The percentage of total budget spent on Primary Health Care Services decreased over the years.

In 2010/11, 8.5 per cent was spent of Primary Health Care Services, while this decreased to 6.9, 6.8 and 5.8 per cent in 2011/12.

2012/13 and 2013/14 respectively.

On average 7.0 per cent was spent on Primary Health Care Services over 2009-2014.

The percentage spent on public health has been 7.9 per cent on average over 2009-2014.
This percentage has been fluctuating between 6.0 and 10.1 per cent over the years and no clear trend can be found.
116 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 6-6: Condensed Budget MOH, administrative classification, 2009-2014 (in EC$ 1000, constant 2012/2013 prices) 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Year % of MOH total Administrative classification Central health administration Of which office costs Of which equipment costs All other costs General hospitals Of which hospital administration Of which medical services District hospitals Of which hospital administration Of which medical services Drug, alcohol and rehab related Of which hospital administration Of which medical services Of which Substance Abuse Secretariat Human Services Of which administration Of which family and child care Of which welfare services Of which Transit Home Senior Citizens Home Of which administration Of which services - 406 4,924 4,543 381 66,969 52,515 267 14,187 48,592 23,872 24,720 1,819 759 1,060 915 203 298 414 4,636 2,368 684 - 1,584 952 545 407 Primary health care services 12,104 11,705 10,893 Of which administration Of which community services Public health Of which general Of which specific Gros Islet Polyclinic Of which administration Of which services Gender relations Mental health Of which administration Of which medical services - - Total 167,013 138,119 158,551 141,234 163,164 100.0% Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013b), Authors’ edit.
Note:*In these numbers, expenditures for the New National Hospital account for the largest share of total costs.

Health Care 117 It is clear from the table that central administrative costs represent a major proportion of the total health budget.

The table also indicates that within administrative categories a sizable share of budget allocations is directed towards administration.

This is important and will be discussed more in depth below.
Table 6-7 shows the allocation in a more condensed form, but now with a distinction between the recurrent and capital expenditures.

It clearly shows that the general administration and the general hospitals are the biggest cost centres, representing 38.3 and 32.1 per cent of the total MOH budget in 2009-2014.

For the Central Health Administration, the lion’s share lies in capital expenditures, mostly related to the construction of the New National Hospital.
In total those capital expenditures account for 76.9 per cent of total capital expenditures.

Other large capital expenditures were done for mental health and public health.

Seven per cent of the total budget is directed towards primary health care services and 7.9 per cent to public health.

General hospitals receive a large share of the recurrent budget; 51.4 per cent.

General administration received 13.8 per cent of the total recurrent budget over the years.
Human services received 4.3 per cent of the budget while district hospitals, surprisingly, received only 1.4 per cent of the total budget.
Table 6-7: Recurrent and capital expenditure of MOH 2009-2014, Administrative classification (in EC$1000, constant 2012/2013 prices) Programme Recurrent expenditure (RE) ∑2009-2014 Capital expenditure (CE) ∑2009-2014 Total expenditure (TE) ∑2009-2014 In 1,000 EC$ % of RE In 1,000 EC$ % of CE In 1,000 EC$ % of TE Central health administration 64,675 13.8% 76.9% 293,768 38.3% General hospitals District hospitals Turning point Human Services Senior Citizens Home Primary health care services Public health Gros Islet Polyclinic Gender relations Mental health Total Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013b), Authors’ own calculations For the condensed version of the economic classification, see table 6-8.
Table 6-8 reveals that roughly a third (32.6 per cent) of the total budget goes into salaries.

The second biggest cost centre, at 29.9 per cent, is office costs.

For the MOH, these costs consist mainly of capital expenditure for the New National Hospital and other rehabilitation costs of buildings.

Of the expenses, 14.4 per cent are attributable to goods and services, while only 0.5 per cent of the total budget goes into training.
The detailed Figure 6-4 shows that the costs of salaries have been increasing over the years.

Corrected for inflation, more than 6 million EC$ extra was spent on salaries in 2013/14, compared to 2009/10.
118 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Figure 6-4: Condensed budget MOH economic classification 2009-2014 Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013b), Authors’ own calculations Table 6-8: Condensed budget MOH economic classification, 2009-2014 Year 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 47,332 47,760 49,064 52,522 53,679 468 612 646 973 Goods and services 19,613 20,327 22,176 24,937 1,335 59,741 17,675 15,896 4,954 2,183 45,850 4,907 16,480 - 2,924 38,099 3,460 2,201 56,287 11,634 16,544 18,264 18,084 - 55 50 Item Salaries Training Equipment Office costs Other Grants and contributions Public assistance Total 833 23,803 28,400 29,564 8,752 Total 2009-2014 32.6% 0.5% 14.4% 4.8% 29.9% 6.0% 11.1% 1.1% 167,013 138,119 158,551 141,234 163,164 100.0% Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013b), Authors’ own calculations.
Goods and services also include drug costs.

Health Care 119 To compare the expenditures on salaries with international benchmarks, we turn to a study of the World Health Organization from 2006.

In this study, an assessment is made of salary costs as a percentage of total general Government health expenditure (GGHE).

It shows that in the Americas, almost 50 per cent of the GGHE is spent on salaries.

Saint Lucia, at 32.6 per cent is thus quite low.


(See table 6-9).66 Table 6-10 shows the MOH collected (own) revenues for 2009/10 – 2013/14.

In total, these revenues make up (7.51per cent) of the total expenditures of the Ministry of Health.

In most cases, revenues have decreased over time.

For example, in primary health care, revenues were 0.98 million EC$ in 2009/10, and gradually decreased to 0.87 million EC$ in 2013/14.
The Gros Islet Polyclinic covers 32.9 per cent of expenditures with its revenues, the highest share of all programmes.

Health facilities, such as St Jude Hospital and, to a larger extent, Victoria hospital67, face difficulties in collecting user fees.

On average about 45 to 55 per cent of the patient bills are collected, according to Tareq et al.

(2010).

In theory however, the fees should be paid before a service is provided.
Table 6-9: Remunerations as per cent of government expenditure on health WHO Region Number of countries with data accessed Remunerations* as percentage of general government health expenditure (GGHE) Africa South-East-Asia Europe Western Pacific Americas Eastern Mediterranean World Saint Lucia 14 2 18 7 17 5 64 -- 29.5% 35.5% 42.3% 45% 49.8% 50.8% 42.2% **32.6% Source: Hernandez, Dräger, Evans, Edejer, and Poz (2006).
Note: Includes Wages, salaries and allowances of employees ** Includes Personal Emoluments, Wages, Travel and Subsistence, Rewards, compensation and incentives.

66 It must be noted that the methodology of the WHO study might not be similar to our study, and that calculation methods might differ, however this is just to give some sort of comparison 67 The limitations that St. Jude Hospital faces in charging user fees are significantly less than at Victoria Hospital.
St. Jude Hospital is a statutory body and as such is required to fund with user fees all costs which cannot be financed by the budget transfer it receives.

St Jude Hospital is thus allowed to charge user fees which incorporates the full market costs of medical supplies, pharmaceuticals and a mark-up to its patients which is not possible at Victoria Hospital (Tareq et al., 2010).
120 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table 6-10: MOH revenues, 2009-2014 (in constant 2012/13 and EC$ 1000) Revenues per programme Administration General hospitals District hospitals Drug, rehab etc.
related Human services Senior citizens home Primary health care services Public health Gros Islet Polyclinic Gender relations Mental health Year % of expenditure Total 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 3,521 2,841 369 57 - - 979 - 435 - - 3,224 4,853 5,642 5,256 22,496 2,696 2,608 2,573 2,391 13,108 385 36 - - 905 - 387 - - 340 39 - - 977 - 474 - - 303 18 - - 878 - 454 - - 326 20 - - 1,723 169 - - 868 4,606 - - 390 2,141 - - - - 9.5% 6.6% 19.9% 4.4% 0.0% 0.0% 10.7% 0.0% 32.9% 0.0% 0.0% Total 8,202 7,633 9,290 9,868 9,251 44,244 7.16% Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013b), Authors’ own calculations Table 6-11 looks into the staff numbers compared to the total expenditure.
The total number of staff has increased from 619 to 811 in those years.

From 2011/12 – 2013/14, 83 per cent or 485 people of total staff had a medical function; 17 per cent had an administrative function.

Dividing the total of expenditures on salaries by the amount of staff, the table shows that the average expenditure per worker has gone down.

In 2009/10, roughly 76,465 EC$ was spent on the average worker, while in 2013/14 this would be 66,188 EC$.
It must be noted, however, that the salary expenditures presented here include wages, personal emoluments, travel and subsistence and other items (see the conversion table).

For a complete overview of staff numbers, refer to the annex.

Table 6-11: Salary expenditures MOH 2009-2014 (In EC$1000 constant 2012/12 prices)68 Salaries 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Total salary expenditure (EC$) 47,331,932 47,760,120 49,064,027 52,521,514 53,678,781 Total no.

of staff.
of staff.

Of which medical (%) Total expenditure / total no.

of staff (EC$) 619 78% 629 81% 741 83% 839 83% 811 83% 76,465 75,930 66,213 62,600 66,188 Year Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013b), Authors’ own calculations.

68 Salary costs include wages, personal emoluments, travel and subsistence etc.

The staff numbers are only representative for the total number of staff in service of the ministry.

Contracted people are not accounted for.


Therefore, the average payment might not give a representative number.

Administrative staff includes administrative staff and ancillary services staff.

This categorization can be found in the Government Estimates in the staff positions section.
No changes were made in this categorization Health Care 121 Table 6-12: Medical and administration costs, Total, 2009-2014 (in million EC$, 2012/13 constant prices) Classification 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Year Total (EC$) Total (%) Administration 107,726 86,722 99,734 85,192 106,775 486,149 63.3% Medical/services 59,287 51,397 58,817 56,042 56,389 281,931 36.7% Total 167,013 138,119 158,551 141,234 163,164 768,081 100.0% Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013), Authors’ own calculations.
Table 6-13: Medical and administration costs, recurrent expenditures only, 2009-2014 (in million EC$ 2012/13 constant prices)69 Classification 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Year Total (EC$) Total (%) Administration 35,772 38,801 41,175 46,358 45,875 207,980 45.9% Medical/services 46,028 43,231 46,354 53,763 55,594 244,970 54.1% Total 81,800 82,032 87,529 100,121 101,468 452,950 100.0% Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013), Authors’ own calculations 6.4.4 Medical and administrative costs Table 6-12 consolidates administrative spending at the central health administration and the various programme administrations and shows that the medical expenses are far less than the administrative expenses.
About two thirds of the expenses are directed towards administrative expenses.

Looking at the first column for example, it appears that in 2009/10, 86.5 million of 134.2 million EC$ was spent on administration costs.

In the following years, administration costs remained higher than the medical expenditures.

In the final column, a percentage of the total expenditures is given: 63.3 per cent goes into administration costs.

The remaining 36.7 per cent is spent on medical costs.
It must be noted that a large fraction of these can administration costs mentioned above to be attributed the construction of New National Hospital, which is under ‘central health administration’.

If capital expenditures are left out, Table 6-13 shows how in the years 2009-2014, administration costs still account for almost half of the expenditures (45.9 per cent).
6.4.5 Allocation per programme Looking at the expenditures for the central health administration in figure 6-5, it appears that 24 per cent of the budget is budgeted for salaries in 2013/14.

Roughly 60 per cent is spent on goods and services.

Part of the explanation derives from the fact that purchases, for example for medicines, are organized at the central level.

The other 16 per cent is divided under grants and contributions, office costs and equipment.
Compared to 2007/2008, salary costs decreased, but grants and contributions70 have taken up a larger share of the total costs.

69 Medical includes gender relations, public health, substance abuse secretariat and all non-administration services.

Administration includes agency administration and all administrative sub-items.

70 This includes transfer payments to statutory boards, local, regional and international organisations individual and medical assistance.
122 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Figure 6-5: Central health administration (Recurrent only), 2007/08 and 2013/14 2007/08 2013/14 Source: GOSL (2009, 2013b), Authors’ own calculations Figure 6-6 does the same, except now for the general hospitals.

Here the total expenditure, including capital expenditures is used.

It appears that 49 per cent of the budget goes to salaries, 28 per cent into grants and contributions and 20 per cent into goods and services.
In total, only 3 per cent goes to office costs and equipment, which seems low.

Compared to earlier years, this division of costs has been relatively stable.

It should be noted that equipment costs almost doubled since 2009/10.

Figure 6-7 (overleaf) shows the allocation of costs for the Human Services department in 2013/14.
This department administers services that, in particular, are relevant for children and gender, such as family and child care, foster care, the Upton Gardens Girls Home, and the Transit Home.

Here, 46 per cent goes into salaries.

A large share, 37 per cent, is allocated to Grants and Contributions.

Goods and services account for 10 per cent of costs, while the remaining 7 per cent are allocated to office costs, equipment and public assistance.
Figure 6-6: General hospitals, 2013/14 Source: GOSL (2013b), Authors’ own calculations Health Care 123 Figure 6-7: Human Services, 2013/14 6.4.6 Spending execution Table 6-14 examines to what extent the actual expenditures are in line with the revised budget.

This is important from a planning perspective and even more so from an audit point of view.

Parliament should be able to trust that budget appropriations and execution of the budget do not deviate to a large extent.
It appears that in each year the budget was exceeded.

The biggest deviation was in 2008/09, when the budget was overstepped by 5.9 per cent.

On average, the budget was exceeded by 2.4 per cent per year.

Source: GOSL (2013b).

Authors’ own calculations.
Table 6-14: Deviation of expenditure from revised budget (recurrent), 2009-2012 Programme 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 Average deviation (in EC$) Total deviation (in %) Year Administration General hospitals District hospitals Drug, alcohol and rehab related Human Services Senior Citizens Home Primary health care services Public health Gros Islet Polyclinic Gender relations Mental health -5% 12% -7% 23% 20% -4% 3% -8% -9% 3% -14% 1% 0% 15% 41% -1% -2% 8% 4% 0% 7% -1% 19% 1% 23% 68% -62% 3% 13% -3% 751,737 804,837 -11% 54,309 7.4% 1.9% 3.3% 55% 248,238 46.3% -3% -2% -865,212 -12,585 -14.5% -1.7% 13% 14% 721,752 9.7% 11% -10% 1% 61% -8% -3% -51,334 -52,388 -13% -8,978 4% 328,881 -0.8% -5.5% -1.2% 10.1% Sum of changes (in EC$) 4,189,447 1,206,143 1,622,827 658,615 1,919,258 7,677,032 Percentage of total budget 5.9% 1.5% 2.0% 0.8% 2.4% Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013).
Note: Positive deviations (thereby exceeding the revised budget) of more than 10 per cent are highlighted in blue.

124 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Checking the programmes individually, it appears that the biggest part of the total absolute exceeding costs come from the general hospitals, the central administration and primary health care services.
In terms of percentages, the drug, alcohol and rehab related programmes stand out, exceeding the budget each year with an average of 46.3 per cent.

Primary health care services also stand out in this respect, exceeding the budget by 9.7 per cent on average.

Assessment of health benefits 6.5 In order to value these findings, it is instructive international to look at expenditure from an perspective.

Compared to other countries in the region, Saint Lucia is considered among the higher spenders.
Between 2009 and 2012, Saint Lucia’s total expenditures on health (THE) accounted for 8 per cent of GDP, the highest of all countries in the graph.

THE consisted for 53 per cent of general government health expenditures (GGHE71).

The other 47 per cent comes from private expenditures.

Figure 6-9 (overleaf ) shows the general government health expenditures (GGHE) for the region.

Saint Lucia spent relatively the most as a percentage of GDP on GGHE (4.7 per cent).
In 2012, 10 per cent was allocated to health in Saint Lucia (WHO, n.d.-a).
Figure 6-8: Total health expenditures (THE) in the Caribbean region, 2009-12 (average, as a percentage) GGHE as % of THE THE as % of GDP t n e c r e P 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 83 74 71 70 66 55 53 51 47 42 World average 58.6 5.0 5.3 6.6 5.7 7.1 5.4 8.0 5.5 6.3 St. Vin ce nt a n d th e A ntig u a a n d B arb u d a G re n a din es G u ya n a D o m inica B arb a d os Ja m aica St. L u cia Trinid a d a n d To b a g o St. Kitts a n d N e vis G re n a d a World average 10.1 5.5 Country Source: WHO (n.d.-a).
Note: World Average gives numbers for 2012 71 This includes not just the resources channelled through government budgets but also the expenditure on health by parastatals, extra budgetary entities and notably the compulsory health insurance.

Health Care 125 Figure 6-9: Government health expenditures in the Caribbean region, 2012 (as a percentage) GGHE as % of total Gov’t.
expenditure GGHE as % of GDP 20.0 18.0 16.0 14.0 12.0 10.0 8.0 6.0 4.0 2.0 0.0 Source: WHO (n.d.-a) 10.3 12.5 10.4 17.8 15.7 9.0 7.6 7.1 4.68 4.28 4.21 3.89 3.46 2.97 2.74 2.32 St. Vin ce nt a n d th e St. L u cia G re n a din es A ntig u a a n d B arb u d a D o m inica B a h a m as, T h e G re n a d a Trinid a d a n d To b a g o St. Kitts a n d N e vis the per capita basis, the When examining Government of Saint Lucia spends an average amount on health, compared to other countries in the region.
This is depicted in figure 6-10.

In 2012, Saint Lucia spent 522 NCU72 per $US per person on health (NCU is used here to ensure purchasing power parity).

There are some outliers.

As a proxy for gaps in affordability and financial protection of (OOP) expenditures as a percentage of total health services, out-of-pocket is used.
Minimizing out-of- expenditure (THE) pocket expenditures is crucial in order to make health services affordable, to avoid barriers to using health care and to avoid health-related impoverishment.

From 2006 until 2012, the out-of- pocket ratio in Saint Lucia (as a percentage of total health expenditure) fluctuated between 44 and 55 per cent (See figure 6-11 for 2012).

According to the latest estimate of 2012, 44 per cent of total health expenditure (THE) was out-of-pocket (WHO, n.d.-a).
Figure 6-10: Government expenditure on health per capita at PPP (NCU per US$), 2012 1,200 1,000 800 600 400 200 0 1,095 776 730 533 522 471 d u a r b T ri n i d o g a b o d T n a d a a a o m i n i c D S t. L c i a u S t. V i n e c n n n t a G r e e e s d t h d i n S t. K itt s a a a m a h a B e h s, T n ti g A d B n a a u Source: WHO (n.d.-a) 72 National Currency Unit 126 419 322 v is e d N n a d a n G r e BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Figure 6-11: Out-of-pocket expenditures in the ECCU (as a percentage), 2012 Out-of-pocket expenditure as % of PvHE Out-of-pocket expenditure as % of THE 100 80 60 40 20 0 91 98 99 85 100 55 52 44 42 54 85 90 29 24 22 18 St. Kitts and Nevis Grenada St. Lucia Trinidad and Tobago Bahamas, The Dominica Antigua and Barbuda St. Vincent and the Grenadines Source: WHO (n.d.-a) The above calculations include the full population.
According to the ILO (2010), and as shown in Figure 6-12, on average only 13.9 per cent of expenditures has to be borne out of pocket in countries with the lowest poverty rates (less than 2 per cent of people living on less than US$2 PPP per day).

The percentage of out-of-pocket expenditures progressively increases as the poverty rates increase.

For countries with poverty rates of 75 per cent or more, almost 70 per cent of total health expenditures have to be borne out-of-pocket.
Figure 6-12: Out-of-pocket expenditure as a percentage of total health expenditure by poverty incidence, 2006 (percentage of people living on less than US$2 PPP per day) 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 s e r u t i d n e p x e t e k c o p - f o - t u o e g a t n e c r e P Source: ILO (2010) 69.5 36.8 44.1 47.1 13.9 Less than 2 per cent 2.1 to 25 per cent 25.1 to 50 per cent 50.1 to 75 per cent More than 75 per cent Proportion of people living on less than US$2 PPP per day Health Care 127 Key performance indicators Towards the end of the chapter it is instructive to provide some highlights in the form of key performance indicators (KPIs) with respect to performance and financing of health care in Saint Lucia.
According to the Ministry of Health, the health status of the population of Saint Lucia has seen significant improvements in past decades.

These include a declining infant mortality and maternal mortality ratio, increasing the percentage of births attended by a skilled health professional (99 per cent) and improving the nutritional status of children (Commonwealth Secretariat, 2014).

The KPI indicators in Table 6-15 show that the situation has been somewhat stagnant over the past couple of years.
There have also been some improvements in the decrease of the death rate, as well as a slight increase in medical staff.

Table 6-15: Ministry of Health KPIs, 2009-2014 MOH KPIs Saint Lucia 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Year KPIs (source) Birth rates (per 1,000 pop.)

(World Bank) Death rate (per 1,000 pop.)

(World Bank) Infant mortality rate (per 1,000 pop.)

(World Bank) Under-5 mortality rate (per 1,000 pop.)

(World Bank) Doctor/patient ratio (per 10,000 pop.)
(PAHO) Medical staff in administration (as a per cent of total staff ) (GOSL) Life expectancy, females (in years) (CSO) Life expectancy, males (in years) (CSO) Maternal mortality rate (per 100,000 births) (WHO) Financing 13.3 7.6 20.5 18.5 -- 78 -- -- 11.4 7.6 20.1 18.2 12.9 81 -- 35 12.0 5.9 20.1 17.9 -- 83 -- -- 12.4 5.5 20.2 17.5 -- 83 78.4 72.0 -- Public health expenditure (per cent of GOSL budget) (GOSL) 20.0 14.2 14.5 11.7 Public health expenditure (per cent of GDP) (GOSL) Out-of-pocket expenditures (as a per cent of THE) (WHO) Out-of-pocket expenditures (as a per cent of PvtHe) (WHO) 5.8 44 99 4.4 45 99 4.7 53 99 4.0 44 99 Private expenditure on health (as a per cent of THE) (WHO) 44.9 45.4 53.4 44.8 Revenues -- -- -- -- 83 -- 34 13.9 4.5 -- -- -- Revenues (per cent of total MOH expenditure) (GOSL) 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 Allocation of MOH Budget Allocation to primary health care (per cent) (GOSL) Allocation to public health (per cent) (GOSL) Allocation to administration (per cent) (GOSL) Allocation to salaries (per cent) (GOSL) 7.2 8.2 64.5 28.3 8.5 7.8 62.8 34.6 6.9 10.1 62.9 30.9 6.8 7.5 60.3 37.2 5.8 6.0 65.4 32.9 Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013b), The World Bank (n.d.), Pan American Health Organization (2012), WHO (n.d.-a), (Central Statistics Office (CSO), 2014) authors own calculations.
Note: -- data not available.

128 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Considering the indicators on financing and allocation of MOH budget, it appears that an overall decrease in many of the indicators can be observed if compared to the former years, such as public health expenditure as a percentage of GOSL budget (went from 20 per cent in 2009 to 13.9 in 2013) and within the health budget the allocation to primary health (went from 7.2 per cent in 2009 to 5.8 per cent in 2013).
Allocations to the administration were stable in these five years and salary costs increased substantially.

The reduction in budget allocations to primary health care affects children and families with children, as these tend to rely heavily on the availability of these services.

In 2012/13, the last year on which the table has more or less complete information, the largest shares of the health budget went to general hospitals (36 per cent) and administration (35 per cent).
Seven per cent of the MOH budget was allocated to primary health care services and 8 per cent for public health, making up 15 per cent of the total MOH budget.

Discussion 6.6 Several issues come out in the analysis in this chapter on the health budget.

Children’s priorities in budget allocation First and most importantly, it is not clear how, if at all, the budget allocations devoted to children’s priorities are determined.
There is no information on utilization for almost all health care provisions, except primary health care.

This does not bode well for children’s priorities in the allocation of resources in the MOH’s budget.

There are several avenues for Government should it wish to address this issue.

One of those would be child-related tagging of the Government budget.
This is the most sophisticated avenue to pursue and given that the Government of Saint Lucia is in the process of adopting performance-based budgeting, this could well be something that deserves serious consideration.

This would require the collection of age specific utilization information and age specific cost breakdowns of services.

For generic services, like administration and public health programmes, age specific utilization shares could be constructed.
This information could then be translated into child- related tags that can be used to monitor the extent to which budget allocations and expenditure are in line with the share of children and specific children’s needs.

Allocation efficiency of spending The three hospitals represent a substantial share of total health care expenditure.

On average, these hospitals receive 32 per cent of the total health care budget.

This is even larger when one just looks at recurrent spending.
The share of general hospitals in total recurrent expenditure is 50 per cent .

This comes at the expense of other sectors that receive a much reduced slice of the cake.

For example, around 7 per cent of the total health budget is allocated to primary health care.

In fact, expenditure on primary health care decreased in real terms (constant prices) between 2009/10 and 2013/14 from EC$ 12.1 million to EC$ 9.3 million.
This can be compared to real expenditure on general hospitals which increased from EC$ 47.5 million in 2009/10 to EC$ 51.9 million in 2013/14.

Since primary health services are crucial for children and families with children, this calls for urgent attention.

Operational efficiency of spending From a perspective of child-focused health care budgeting the item that stands out on the negative side is the high proportion of resources spent on administrative overheads.
These resources are not available for services that might benefit children and families with children.

Some two thirds of the health care budget is allocated towards administration.

There is the issue of the New National Hospital and this accounts for a large amount of capital expenditure.

However, even within recurrent expenditure almost 50 per cent are administrative overheads.
This should provide some scope for the reduction of inefficiencies and re-allocating resources to programmes that would benefit children.

More data needed especially on children Utilisation related to costs need to be better understood.

Is the money going to the right places?

In particular, is sufficient money going to services that are important for child survival?
The information required to answer these questions is Health Care 129 currently not available and this is something that needs to be looked into with high priority.

The Ministry of Education is collecting information on the utilization of education services on an annual basis.

The chapter on education can serve as an example of how this information can be used in child budgeting analysis.

With respect to health care this is a gap that needs to be filled urgently.
130 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA 7 Concluding Remarks and Future Outlook © UNICEF/ECA/(2015/Peter Flood) No matter how much importance countries assign to the rights of children through rhetoric or legislation, failing to allocate resources to fulfil these rights will inevitably mean that they would not be considered a real priority.

Thus, public budgets can be seen as the substantiation of political commitment when it comes to ensuring the child rights.
A child responsive budget is not a separate budget, but rather one which makes spending on children explicit and enables the disaggregation of overall allocations to be able to specifically examine those that benefit children.

Children in Saint Lucia” aims to assist in this effort by presenting an analysis of the national budget, while reflecting on policies and investments for children in Saint Lucia.
This report analyses the budgets of the various Ministries and semi-autonomous agencies that are responsible for administering programmes in the area of education, social protection, child protection and health – that is, direct and indirect programmes that benefit children and households with children in Saint Lucia.
States are obliged to invest to the maximum extent of their available resources for guaranteeing that all the rights safeguarded by the Convention of the Rights of the Child are fulfilled to the maximum.
This requires the governments to assess the needs of children in terms of budget allocations, utilize a child-rights approach in the preparation of the State budget, with clear allocations for children in the relevant sectors and agencies, and provide disaggregated information on the proportion of the national budget allocated to the implementation of the rights of the child at the national and local level.
This report “Budget Analysis for Investments in Highlights from the report 7.1 Economic growth in Saint Lucia has slowed down to almost a complete halt in the past decade.

Real GDP per capita 3.56 billion EC$ in 2013 was lower than 3.64 billion EC$ in 2008.

The island is vulnerable to economic and environmental disasters, not least because it relies on just a small number of economic activities that are highly exposed to international markets and patterns.
From a fiscal perspective, the high debt/GDP ratio stands out.

This ratio has increased over the past decade and stood at 80 per cent in 2013/14 and is expected to ‘go through the roof’ (100 per cent of GDP) in the near future.

Concluding Remarks and Future Outlook 131 The Government is working hard to improve its public financial management (PFM).
Successes include the streamlining of macroeconomic and fiscal forecasts, the move towards integrated budget preparation and economic planning, and enhancement of the strategic content in the budget preparation process.

The reform of PFM for Saint Lucia is of crucial importance to improve the financial planning and governance of child related social programmes in Saint Lucia.
Two issues are of particular relevance for the discussion on child rights budgeting in the context of overall PFM reform in Saint Lucia.

Firstly, the formulation of performance indicators – in SMART terms – that help to reduce the incremental nature of the budget and turn it more into a strategic venture has only just started.
Secondly, there is no unified framework for recurrent and capital expenditure – the capital (development expenditure) budget is prepared parallel to the recurrent expenditure budget and the two are not integrated at a later stage, despite the fact that there are ‘hidden’ recurrent costs in capital expenditure.

In this report, the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for education, social protection, child protection and health can be a model for annual data collection for the Ministry of Finance (MOF).
It can be perceived as an elaboration on performance-based budgeting in the area of direct and indirect social spending on children.

In addition, some effort has been made to disentangle recurrent and capital expenditure items and to bring both to a level of detail where meaningful claims as to allocative and operational inefficiencies can be made.
Saint Lucia’s population is aging, but it can still be considered relatively young given that almost half of the population is under 30 years old and around one fourth of the population under 14 years old.

In 2013, 30 per cent of the population were under 18.

The declining fertility rates and increasing life expectancy at birth are causing the average age of Saint Lucia’s population to increase.
In addition, birth rates have declined, but there is a large segment in the 15-24 age-group who are at the threshold and/or are making their entrance into the work force.

Over the past decade, the labour has not been able to absorb the inflow, nor will it be able to do so in the future.

Over 50 per cent of the currently unemployed are in the 15–29 age-group.
Based on existing information, it is impossible to assess the poverty risk of the population in Saint Lucia and whether their situation has improved or worsened.

The latest analysis of poverty dates back to 2006.

The limited information that is available indicates that certain population in this area subgroups remain vulnerable to either become or remain poor.

These include children, women, elderly and persons living in rural areas.
Looking at household composition, individuals living in single-person households, households with more than three children, female-headed households, and households with relatively young heads have a higher risk of being poor.

Analysis based on data from the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS 4) further indicates that in terms of material well-being, children are on average worse off than adults.

One out of three children in Saint Lucia is multi-dimensionally deprived.
Analysis of child well-being in the health and nutrition domain revealed that approximately 5 per cent of Saint Lucian children are undernourished.

With respect to education, the analysis indicated that most of the children in Saint Lucia attend primary school education, whereas attendance rates are lower for secondary school, and considerably particularly for children living in large households.
The study showed that children’s access to information is high: 97.4 per cent of all families with children own a TV, phone, radio or computer.

With regards to child protection, the average well- being rate of children in Saint Lucia needs attention, especially the issue of corporal punishment, which seems to be widely accepted as a method to restore discipline.
All in all, the overall average child well- being rate in Saint Lucia is 66.1 per cent, signifying that two out of three children are well-off (i.e.

in all but one dimension).

Improvement in the overall child well-being rates could be achieved (amongst other interventions) through improvements in the domains of child protection and sanitation facilities, especially in rural areas.
Children living in large families and those living with a single adult also deserve extra attention, since these children are frequently comparably worse off.

132 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Saint Lucia’s social budget spans close to one quarter of total government expenditure or 8 per cent of GDP.

Moreover, expenditure on social programmes has been rather stable at the level from 2009/10 onwards.
Within the overall spending portfolio, education (4 per cent of GDP) and health (around 2.5 per cent of GDP), take the largest share.

Expenditure on child protection programmes has been stable at 0.5 per cent of GDP ever since 2011/12.

Expenditure on social protection programmes has been more volatile.

This applies in particular to social protection programmes for the working age population.
Spending on social protection for children – education related programmes, such as school feeding and bursaries – has been quite stable at around 0.2 per cent of GDP.

Expenditure on ALMPs has fluctuated between 0.4 per cent of GDP in 2011/12 to 1.1 per cent of GDP in 2012/13, and spending on cash transfers and social services for families stands at 0.3 per cent of GDP.

This is a decrease from its 0.5 per cent of GDP level in 2011/12.
Education •• Overall, the allocation of resources towards the MOEs budget measured consistently (2012/13) following a hike in 2012/13 (212 million EC$), returning to just below its 2009/10 level, around 187 million EC$ includes expenditure on child related social protection programmes and, standing at 4.7 per cent of GDP, is therefore higher than the 4 per cent of GDP mentioned in the previous paragraph.

in 2013/14.
in 2013/14.

This •• Over the year 2009/10 to 2013/2014, expenditure on primary, secondary and tertiary education exceeded 70 per cent of the education budget.

On the other end of the scale, the share of spending on ECD is a meagre 1.2 per cent.

The average spending per student during early childhood education is only 562 EC$ while the amount spent per person in tertiary education is 6,854 EC$, which is more than 10 times higher.
In stark contrast to ECD spending, 8.4 percent of the budget went to tertiary education while 15.2 per cent of the total education budget has been allocated to central administration.

•• Of expenditures, 85 per cent are recurrent and •• only 15 per cent of the total expenditure is capital expenditure.

In recurrent expenditure, primary and secondary education are major cost centres, 34.4 per cent and 39 per cent large majority of capital respectively.
The expenditure was in administration, which makes up to 77.3 per cent of the total.

Considering that the public sector is the main provider of education services in Saint Lucia, expenditure on salaries represent two thirds of the total budget and has crowded out other items.
Of the total budget, 66.3 per cent is allocated to salaries and primary (94 per cent) and secondary (87 per cent) are the largest share of these salary costs while 10.3 per cent of the budget is allocated to grants and contributions and 1.3 per cent to training.

While this high level of expenditure can be explained, with such large portions going to salaries, very little remains to cover other important facets of the education system.
For example only 0.1 per cent of the budget goes to student welfare support, which holds programmes like the bursaries programme and the school transportation programme, and only 1.5 per cent is spent on special education.

•• Budget spending execution73 did not improve in the period 2009/10 to 2011/12.

The budget spending execution has been exceeding from 2008 to 2010, i.e., 1.3 per cent overstepped in 2008/09, 0.3 per cent in 2009/10 and 2010/11 respectively.
However, this trend reversed with 2.7 per cent less spending execution than budgeted in the year 2011/12.

•• As expected, average spending per student rises with the advancement in the educational level.

However, children the poor segments of society are benefiting very little with the investment in the post-secondary or higher education in Saint Lucia.
Most students in the post-secondary or tertiary education are found in the richer quintile, with 34.9 per cent from 73 Spending execution, that is: to what extent the actual expenditures are in line with the (revised) budget.

Note that 2011/12 is the last Fiscal Year (FY) where the budget as approved in parliament could be compared to the actual execution of the budget.

Concluding Remarks and Future Outlook 133 belonging to the richest quintile and only 3.5 per cent – to the poorest quintile.
•• The teacher:student ratio in primary education is decreasing from 1:20 (2009/10) to 1:17 (2012/13), and in secondary education from 1:17 (2009/10) to 1:14 (2012/13).

There are plans to increase the ratio in the coming years.

One key strategic shift could be training and reassigning primary and secondary teachers to early childhood education as qualified/trained practitioners.

•• While gender disparity between males and females on the primary level is not very evident, in secondary school.
the situation differs There are 10 per cent more males attending secondary schools than females, however the pattern turns when the actual achievement is observed.

Additionally, females are almost 25 per cent more likely to go on to post-secondary education.
•• One of the main messages from this report is that a more clear formulation of priorities, vesting these priorities in the cost effectiveness and in the social impact of public expenditure on education, and translating these into the budget allocation, should constitute an important element in Saint Lucia’s strategic vision.

Social protection Social protection is aimed at suffering children.
The current programmes in Saint Lucia are designed with an education lens – that is, to facilitate access to basic education against no or little costs.

This leaves a large group of children of pre-school age out of the equation.

Moreover, the resources allocation to these education programmes with a social protection objective is dwarfed in comparison to the resources allocated to programmes for adults.
it is an effort to position the various programmes in terms of the implementations mechanisms applied.

For example, cash-transfer programmes versus services, active labour market programmes versus unconditional (passive) welfare programmes, and programmes targeting children versus programmes targeting adults.

However, is apparent that reality in Saint Lucia escapes such theoretical classifications.
Social protection programmes in Saint Lucia tend to implement a wide range of services and do not invest much in narrowing down their target groups.

This is most evident in the set of programmes categorized under active labour market programmes (ALMPs).

There appears to be some mismatch between the resources allocated to these and other programmes.

The ALMPs all suffer from design deficiencies which tend to lock their participants in and deter their entrance into the regular labour market.
Despite the fact that there is a range of programmes with large numbers of participants, the problems in Saint Lucia’s labour market have deteriorated since the economic crisis.

From a governance perspective, the current situation in which programmes are scattered over various Ministries and other implementing agencies needs to be addressed.

The habit of decision makers to champion new programmes without clear or distinct objectives from the existing ones is also a factor that needs to change.
This should be high on the agenda in the near future when the new National Social Protection Policy is implemented.

In addition to this, it became clear in the report that most of the programmes are unable to report in a sufficient level of detail on their programme and administration costs.

The SSDF and the NICE administrations perform ‘best of the rest’ so to speak.
Even for these programmes, however, it was not possible to arrive at a breakdown of their beneficiaries and their expenditure in terms of age groups which is a condition sine qua non for budgeting for children.

In discussing social protection programmes in Saint Lucia, this report has categorized the various programmes into three clusters.

Within these clusters numerous overlaps exist in terms of target groups, programme objectives and instruments (measures).
The distinction in the three clusters Budget of Ministry of Social Transformation (MOST) •• Overall, the allocation of resources towards the MOSTs budget measured in constant (2012/13) prices, stands at 43.9 million EC$ in 2013/14, which is below its level in 2009/10 (44.9 million 134 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA EC$).

In between, the budget allocated to the MOST has peaked at 75.9 million EC$ in 2010/11 and was rather stable around 55 million EC$ in the period afterwards.
The most recent year, therefore, represents a significant drop in spending.

•• Spending execution has much improved.

In earlier years, a significant amount of underspending was reported but in more recent years actual expenditure has been close to the approved budget.

The exception is welfare service expenditures which exceeded the (latest revised) budget by more than 17 per cent.

•• share of non-specified expenditure, The itemized as ‘other costs’, is high.
This raises the question whether the budget applies the proper categories to be transparent, informative and relevant.

•• Capital expenditure is high for the Ministry of Social Transformation.

It is observed that more than half of the Ministry’s expenditure is capital expenditures.

This is something one would not expect to find in in ministry that is responsible for social programmes.

Staff salaries on average are extremely high, more than twice the average level in the other Ministries reviewed.
In fact, there has been a boost in the total sum of salaries in 2010/11, which was not reflected in a similar increase in numbers of staff.

This warrants further investigation.

•• •• Looking into the SSDF budget, it can be noted that the major programmes that SSDF administers have reduced expenditures significantly in the most recent year.

The exception is the Koudmen Sent Lisi (KSL) programme that has been rolled out from a pilot programme into a regular programme.
•• •• Data collection is weak for social protection programmes.

The report lists a table with KPIs and it is incomplete or missing information.

However, it can be a model for annual data collection for the MOF in line with the objective to achieve performance-based budgeting in the area of social protection spending.

Child related social protection programmes •• Most of these programmes fall under the remit of the Ministry of Education.
This is for a good reason as one of the main objectives of these programmes is, and should be, the facilitation of free and universal basic education for children from poor and vulnerable families.

•• The overall spending on these programmes, 0.2 per cent of GDP, compared to, for example, 4.1 per cent for education or 1.1 per cent for ALMPs, is very low.
To put this into perspective, the number of Saint Lucians under the age 20 is almost equal to the number of Saint Lucians between the ages of 20 and 40 years.

This is the age group most ALMPs are targeting with almost six times the budget that is allocated for social protection programmes for children.

•• The proper level and mechanism of targeting might be an issue.
Where the laptop programme might be justified for reasons other than social protection, the grounds for providing a once- off bursary to all children entering secondary school is more disputable.

With the same resources a better targeted programme could do much more to help children from poor and vulnerable families.

•• For programmes such as school feeding, the low per capita level of administration costs reveals that administration, including targeting, is performed in an efficient manner.
For most of the programmes information was not available to arrive at such conclusions.

This is an issue for further discussion for the government of Saint Lucia.

Monitoring and evaluation need to be further improved.
Much information is collected and reported in the annual Education Digest and this is laudable, but for an adequate governance of the various programmes, including their coordination and, in particular, their scope to be complimentary more programme specific information needs to be collected from the administrations.

Concluding Remarks and Future Outlook 135 •• Cash transfers and other services that directly or indirectly benefit children •• The these level of overall spending on programmes is low.
If Government is serious in its poverty alleviation objectives, more public resources should be channelled to some of these programmes (those which are most successful).

•• In general, social protection programmes in Saint Lucia suffer from insufficient clarity and focus in their objectives.

This very much pertains to the ALMPs but this also pertains to some of the services for households.

•• The transfer of public assistance to MOST has been a good decision.
It has created opportunities for a better coordination of efforts and resources.

MOST invests significant effort in improving monitoring and evaluation and continues to work on further improvements in its data collection and organization.

•• With respect to KSL, its multidimensional approach is crucial in addressing the often multi- faceted problems of disadvantaged households and individuals.
Efforts and resources can be targeted even better by focusing on households, and even female-headed households, rather than individuals.

Moreover, the programme is expensive in its per capita spending – both in its programme expenditure and administration costs.

Hence, it is not a programme that could be rolled out on a large scale.

It might be feasible to build some of the successful elements into other programmes – notably public assistance programme.
are rather and YEDP costly BELFund in terms of their per capita programmes programme expenditure and administration costs, despite the fact that compliance (loan recovery reasonable.

This raises some questions as to whether the targeted beneficiaries cannot be assisted in less costly ways.

ratios) are generally •• 136 Active labour market programmes - ALMPs •• ALMPs represent a major share of Government expenditure.
The total GDP share of expenditure for ALMPs is in the range of 0.5 and 0.9 per cent of GDP, and between 1.5 and 3 per cent of Government expenditure.

In fact, in terms of GDP share of spending on ALMPs Saint Lucia out-spends even more advanced industrial economies.

This, in combination with the earlier observation of low spending shares on other programmes, raises questions as to whether there is sufficient balance in public resource allocation across the entire spectrum of social protection.
•• In terms of current numbers of participants, the various ALMPs could absorb the entire unemployed youth population (aged 15 to 34 years).

This clearly overshoots the proper target as it may be expected that the majority of unemployed in any age category should be able to find its way into employment without any help from an employment agency.

•• It appears that a large number of these programmes are overshooting in terms of per capita spending on jobseekers.

This is an issue of cost-effectiveness.


Some of the programmes might achieve similar, if not better outcomes, with less costly instruments.

•• In general, it is difficult to attribute labour market outcomes to ALMP measures as there is no counterfactual (that is: what would the state of the labour market situation have been without the measure).
However, looking at youth unemployment rates over recent years, well above 30 per cent, it cannot be claimed that outcomes of the existing programmes are very good.

•• In line with the previous point, the wage levels paid in some of the programmes are high, relative to the level of subsistence and to the average market wages.
This adds to the attractiveness of the programme and makes it doubtful whether these programmes provide sufficient incentives to exit them or, in fact, to even start looking for a job independent of the programme.

BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA •• •• Some of the programmes produce as an outcome the referral of a jobseeker to another programme.

Where in individual cases this might be justified, it should not be the main objective.
The main objective should be to empower participants to find and maintain a job that suits her/his motivation and qualifications.

There are too many ALMPs and too many administering agencies.

This leads to problems of overlap, duplication and coordination failures that the Government wants to address in the NSPP.

It would be useful to merge agencies and create something similar to a public employment service.
•• In line with the previous point, per capita administration costs could be significantly reduced if agencies with similar activities merged.

The Government should monitor these costs and fix them to ceilings.

Child protection •• Expenditure on the various programmes for child protection are scattered across Ministries.

The child protection programmes administered by the Human Services department are under the Ministry of Health, The Boys Training Centre is under the Ministry of Social Transformation.
Other programmes are under various other MDAs (Home Affairs, Legal Affairs, the Prime Minister’s Office and the Supreme Court).

The spread of programmes for child protection across ministries, results in difficulties with comprehensive analysis of child protection programme expenditures, as not all the information is available.

•• From the limited information available, there is a concern over the apparent decreasing budget affecting child protection programmes.
Only 1.2 per cent of Government revenues is allocated to child protection programmes in 2013/2014 that corresponds to 0.3 per cent of GDP.

In real terms, since 2008/09, the budget share in GDP has fluctuated around 0.3 percentage points.

The overall spending on child protection programmes is rather meagre.

•• Although the expenditure on staff salaries has increased over time for child protection programmes, it remains below average salary levels in the health and education sectors.
The actual allocation in the budget for child protection programmes is a critical test of the commitment to uphold the rights of children, especially at a time when funds are tight and demand is rising.

•• In the absence of clear budgetary allocations for child protection it is difficult to collect information continual monitoring of policies for protection of children‘s rights is taking place.
and ensure that •• Objectives in the area of child protection are not clear and coordination on a national level is lacking.

While intentions are good, and there is a voiced commitment towards improving child protection, there is no clear overarching document which commits all responsible stakeholders jointly to advancing the situation of child protection in Saint Lucia.

The establishment of the NACPC has been a step in that direction.
However NACPC lacks a clear mandate, and the necessary authority and resources to effectively carry out an effective coordinating role.

Health •• It is not clear how the budget allocations devoted to children’s priorities are determined.

There is no information on utilisation for almost all health care provisions, except primary health care.
This raises some concerns as to children’s priorities in the allocation of resources in the MOH’s budget.This report has argued for collecting this information and translating this into child-related tags that can be used to monitor the extent to which budget allocations and expenditure are in line with the share of children and specific children’s needs.
•• Overall, the allocation of resources towards the MOHs budget measured in constant (2012/13) prices and stands at 163 million EC$ in 2013/14, which is below its level in 2009/10 (167 million EC$).

In between, the budget allocated to the Concluding Remarks and Future Outlook 137 MOST has been volatile, with significant drops in the budget in 2010/11 and again in 2012/13.

•• Administrative expenditures represent two thirds of the total budget and half of recurrent expenditure.
These resources are not available for services that might benefit children and families with children.

Some two- thirds of the health care budget is allocated towards administration.

Even within recurrent expenditure almost 50 per cent is administrative overhead.

•• Overall, spending execution has improved.

However, sizable re-allocations within the overall expenditure portfolio have remained.
In addition, there is still a substantial overspending on administration, compared to the (revised) budget that has been submitted to parliament.

•• Most of the programme expenditures fall into it the functional classification and one-third of the total budget is allocated to the three large hospitals.

This is even larger when one looks only at recurrent spending.

The share of general hospitals in total recurrent expenditure is 50 per cent.
This comes at the expense of other sectors that receive a much reduced slice of the cake.

Other programmes, that might be more cost-effective, receive far lesser resources.

Expenditure on primary health care decreased in real terms (constant prices) between 2009/10 and 2013/14 from EC$ 12.1 million to EC$ 9.3 million.

Since primary health services are crucial for children and families with children, this calls for urgent attention.
General recommendations 7.2 Based on discussions throughout this study and in addition to the specific recommendations presented, here follow a number of general recommendations.

1.
1.

Establish a national framework for child and gender responsive budgeting The government of Saint Lucia can advance the realization of children’s rights through the development of a country specific, national child 138 and gender responsive budgeting framework which grounds its approach in an evidence-based analysis of aspects of child rights that are identified as lacking or that remain unfulfilled.
This framework would form a situational analysis or equivalent diagnostic, which feasible considering the amount of research that has taken place related to child rights in Saint Lucia.

is An annual budget in itself is too limited and spans too short a time frame for addressing child rights and priorities, which require sustained implementation efforts and policies stretching over a longer period.
The budget cycle needs to be nested within a longer-term policy and planning process, which provides a clear link from planning to the allocation of resources (Norton and Elson, 2002, p. 8).

This is an item which is on the agenda of the ongoing budget reform in Saint Lucia and therefore is supported.
By establishing such a framework, the Government would give headway to the implementation of article 4 of the CRC through prioritizing budgetary allocations with a view to ensure the rights of children and in particular those who belong to vulnerable groups.

An overarching question guiding the budget process should be: What do we want this budget to do?

And especially what do we want it to do for children?
Budgets can be regarded as institutional instruments for realization of child rights and achieving gender equality.

The Government of Saint Lucia can then make use of different stages in the budget cycle (formulation, approval, execution and oversight) to incorporate child rights-related commitments.

2.
2.

Administrative data systems: Monitoring and evaluation Disaggregated data on the level of expenditure on child-focused sectors (education, social protection, child protection and health) should be improved.

The improvement of data entails a detail level that would allow for a child-responsive analysis of patterns in spending on these key sectors but most important on the overall impact of these investment.
This would be tackled through the collection and generation of data which could be disaggregated by age, gender and other relevant BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA decompositions so as to enable better examination of spending trends on children.

For example, as better data becomes available it will become easier to delineate the cost of services for children or services which affect children (such as maternal health).
Additionally, where data is disaggregated by girls and boys, monitoring of outcomes with gender sensitivity can be ensured.

Furthermore, it is evident that the monitoring and evaluation efforts need to be improved.
On the education side, much information is collected and reported in the annual Education Digest, which in itself is good undertaking, but for an adequate governance of the various programmes, including their coordination and, in particular, their scope to be complementary more programme specific information needs to be collected from the administrations.
Monitoring and evaluating the quality of services, projects and programmes provided by the Government is essential while bearing in mind the poor outcomes of the more vulnerable groups.

3.

Capacity strengthening Capacity in the Saint Lucian public sector at present is constrained due to inadequate governance structures and institutional responses.
Shortages of key staff risk delaying the implementation of many priorities, therefore there has to be a concentrated effort to increase the ability of officials and agencies to better perform the core functions, and understand and deal with their development in an appropriate context and in a sustainable manner.

Additionally (and relating to point 2 above) there should be a strengthening of the capacity and resources for the overall effort of improving data.

4.
4.

Improve coordination between and within ministries It is clear that several overlaps exist between ministries as well as within ministries.

The various ministries and departments must joint hands and analyse how the coordination of their strategic plans can be improved, how the programming can be streamlined, and how the quality and the delivery of the benefits can be upgraded.
Future outlook 7.3 •• The recommendations in this study are not meant to address gaps in child rights and how they are not being fulfilled, as this is beyond the scope of this report.

This report should be utilised as a base for further work to advance a long term child responsive budget approach in Saint Lucia and other countries in the Eastern Caribbean area, which includes a clear system of classifying expenditures related to children that can identify resource allocation across priorities.
•• The Government of Saint Lucia can advance the realisation of children’s rights through the development of a country specific, child and gender responsive budget framework which grounds its approach in an evidence-based analysis of aspects of child rights that are identified as lacking or that remain unfulfilled.

This framework would form a situational analysis or equivalent diagnostic, which is feasible with the amount of research that has taken place related to child rights in Saint Lucia.
•• An annual budget in itself is too limited and spans too short a time frame for addressing all child priorities, which require sustained implementation efforts and policies stretching over a longer period.

The budget cycle needs to be nested within a longer-term policy and planning process, which provides a clear link from planning to the allocation of resources (Norton and Elson, 2002, p. 8).

This is an item which is on the agenda of the ongoing budget reform in Saint Lucia and therefore is supported.
•• framework, the By establishing such a government would give headway to the implementation of article 4 of the CRC through prioritizing budgetary allocations with a view to ensure the rights of children and in particular those who belong to vulnerable groups.

An overarching question guiding the budget process should be: What do we want this budget to do?

And especially what do we want it to do for children?
Concluding Remarks and Future Outlook 139 •• •• Budgets can be regarded as institutional instruments for the realization of child rights achieving gender equality.

The Government of Saint Lucia can then make use of different stages in the budget cycle (formulation, approval, execution and oversight) to incorporate child rights-related commitments.

and The widening government deficit increasing public debt pose a challenge.
Given that there is little discretionary room in the current government budget, a possible strategy is to further extend the tax base in order to create fiscal space for investments in education, social protection and child protection and health policies.
However, in order to assess the impact and effectiveness of public spending with respect to outcomes for children and other vulnerable groups, it is imperative to analyse the living standard of the population and identify those groups which are most at risk of living in poverty.

Child poverty analysis is not only essential for measuring policy outcomes, but it is an essential tool for policy planning and decision making in a context of limited financial resources.
Additionally, this type of information can be used to feed into the fine-tuning of policies that aim to specifically alleviate child poverty on the island.

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148 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA 8 Annex Table A- 1: Inflation Correction Table, 2006-2013 Inflation Inflation, average consumer prices (per cent change) Inflation, average consumer prices (index) Year 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 2.83 5.55 -0.16 3.25 2.77 4.18 1.47 85.273 90.284 90.142 93.170 95.823 100.000 101.467 Source: IMF (n.d.).

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Table A- 2: Child related social protection programmes and ALMPs for young adults Child related social protection see, or education see with a social protection component School Feeding The School Feeding Programme targets poor and vulnerable students in public primary schools and provides a hot meal allow- ing these children to attend school.

The programme has no legal title.


School transportation subsidies programme The school transportation programme provides transportation to the schools for public secondary schools, targeting poor and vulnerable students.

The programme has no legal title.

School (book) bursary programme The school book bursary programme is a bursary programme for public primary and secondary schools, targeting poor and vulnerable students.

The programme has no legal title.


The school bursary programme is set up to promote school enrolment and attendance.

Secondary Schools Laptop Programme The Secondary Schools Laptop Programme aims to provide 3,300 laptops to students (form four, secondary school).

The pro- gramme has no legal title.

Community After School Programme (CASP) Design.

The CASP is an initiative of the MOST which started in 2009 to establish the Programme in three communities.
The goal of the Programme is to contribute towards the empowerment and holistic development of children and youth in poor urban and rural communities, by engaging them in meaningful and productive activities that will ultimately enhance their quality of life.

The Programme is conducted after regular school hours.

Annex 149 Active labour market programmes Basic Needs Trust Fund (BNTF) The BNTF provides funding for projects such as access roads, health and education facilities in poor communities.
The fund’s targets fall in the area of enhancing the productive skills of un-/underemployed, providing skills training and job op- portunities for these disadvantaged groups, improving the standard of living of poor communities, building and maintain economic and social infrastructure, and reducing vulnerabilities of women and persons living with HIV/AIDS.

Holistic Opportunities for Personal Empowerment (HOPE) HOPE was launched in 2009 as a major component of Saint Lucia’s Social Safety Net Initiative.
HOPE is a short term employ- ment programme of the SSDF designed to absorb surplus labour and provide training; targeting the indigent, poor and vulnerable.

More specifically, the programme targets unemployed and at risk youth, semi-skilled and un-skilled workers, including senior citizens.

The SSDF implements the program.


Short Term Employment Programme (STEP) Programme Objectives of the STEP programme are on the one hand to generate short-term employment opportunities for disadvan- taged Saint Lucians and improve the human resource base, and on the other hand to alleviate the income situation of poor and vulnerable households, and to address related issues in terms of crime.

The SSDF implements the program.


National Apprenticeship and Placement Programme (NAPP) NAPP is one of several components under the more encompassing National Initiative to Create Employment (NICE) pro- gramme.

NICE, and its constituent see, including NAPP, has been initiated straight from the Prime Minister and the Cabinet of Ministers.
NAPP seeks to provide a step-up for 1,300 disadvantaged jobseekers through the promotion of a series of on-the-job training opportunities in a hands-on ‘real work’ environment, and entrepreneurial opportunities.

Job place- ments are sought in the public sector, within government ministries and parastatal organizations.

The beneficiaries of the programme have been defined as unemployed Saint Lucians aged 16-45 years.
The Constituency Projects and Infrastructure Programme (CPIP) CPIP targets small contractors in all constituencies throughout the island, with a view to providing them with employment opportunities through construction initiatives.

Like the other components under NICE there is no legal title for CPIP.

CPIP aims to provide a safety net for vulnerable households.

The programme sets out to provide job opportunities for the skilled, unskilled and semi-skilled workers in labour intensive activities.
CPIP also aims to contribute to the creation, rehabilitation and maintenance of public infrastructure that has been damaged with the passage of Hurricane Thomas.

National Skills Development Centre (NSDC) The National Skills Development Centre (NSDC) commenced in 2001 offering information and training services towards developing a skilled, informed and marketable workforce.

The target group includes displaced (banana) farmers, school dropouts, teenage mothers as well as youth at risk.
Single Mothers in Life Empowerment Project (SMILES) The SMILES project aims to help deprived single mothers become more self-sustaining and independent, through improv- ing their labour market perspectives.

The target group are single mothers in the age range 18 to 40.

Whilst attending the programme, single mothers will be paid a stipend as well as secured child care support catered for throughout the duration of the programme.
Completion of the SMILES project will earn these single mothers an internationally recognized ‘National Vocation Qualification (NVQ)’ certificate and access to NSDC’s job placement services, including internships, as a stepping stone towards regular jobs.
150 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA The OECS Skills for Inclusive Growth Project The OECS skills for inclusive growth project seeks to improve the employability and career mobility of youth and some other marginalized groups through training/retraining and enterprise development initiatives.

Beneficiaries are aged 16 to 40.


In addition to targeting vulnerable youth, Saint Lucia’s authorities made an effort to reach special-needs population groups, such as HIV infected youth, inmates at the Bordelais Correctional Facility, and girls at risk.

The project has an em- phasis on demand-driven training (World Bank, 2014).

National Enrichment and Learning Programme (NELP) The National Enrichment and Learning Programme is an adult learning programme (ages 16 and over).
The programme has no legal title.

The programme aims at establishing a shift in thinking so that (on a long term basis) learning would become more like an attitude or a habit.

Youth Enterprise Development Fund (YEDF) The Youth Enterprise Development Fund is a micro enterprise development credit initiative targeted primarily at deprived, unemployed young persons, between the ages of eighteen to thirty (18-30) years of age.

The programme has no legal title.


The YEDF is administered by the James Belgrave Micro Enterprise Development Fund (BELfund), with collaboration from the National Skills Development Centre (NSDC).
Youth Agricultural Entrepreneurial Project (YAEP) The youth agricultural entrepreneurship incubator programme is geared at promoting the involvement of youth (between the ages of 18 and 35) in agriculture and enhance the adoption of technological advancement and competitiveness of the island’s agriculture and at the same time ensure the succession of elder farmers bound to retire in the near future.

No leg- islation applies.


The project was conceptualized in 2010, but commenced no earlier than March 2013 due to organization problems.

The following tables provide an overview of budget allocations and numbers of staff of Child Protection administered under other Ministries.
Table A- 3: NEMO, Budget allocations 2007/08 to 2013/14 NEMO Actual Revised Estimates 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Recurrent 430.920 439.007 446.080 468.083 624.573 660.260 663.465 Capital Total 0 0 13.000 23.114 61.522 0 18.385 430.920 439.007 459.080 491.197 686.095 660.260 681.850 Table A- 4: NEMO, number of staff 2007/08 to 2013/14 NEMO Staff Total Funded Staff Total $ 0 0 Actual 4 4 4 4 Revised Estimates 4 4 5 5 5 5 5 5 202.934 237.824 248.754 328.428 328.429 337.187 Annex 151 Table A- 5: Bordelais Correction Facility, Budget allocations 2007/08 to 2013/14 BCF - Programmes Actual Revised Estimates 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Programme Administration 1.753.052 2.007.457 2.545.938 2.952.643 2.117.710 2.440.581 2.436.627 Custodial 4.305.228 5.121.949 5.470.856 5.785.555 5.550.276 4.886.548 4.901.232 Rehabilitation 555.351 655.993 822.609 955.707 918.945 1.018.327 1.024.634 Operations 1.291.075 1.010.989 977.733 986.309 2.615.522 2.615.522 3.542.708 Total 7.904.706 8.796.388 9.817.136 10.680.214 11.202.453 11.202.453 11.905.201 Table A- 6: Bordelais Correction Facility, number of staff 2008/09 to 2013/14 BCF - Funded Staff 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Programme Administration Custodial Rehabilitation Operations Total Funded Staff Total $ 6.516.902 7.249.374 7.630.614 7.658.208 7.768.538 7.888.597 Table A- 7: Police Vulnerable Persons Unit, Budget allocations 2008/09 to 2013/14 Police - Vulnerable Persons Unit Actual Revised Estimates 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Personal Emoluments 262.284 297.383 278.630 291.178 432.869 452.937 Total 262.284 297.383 278.630 291.178 432.869 452.937 152 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA Table A- 8: Police Vulnerable Persons Unit, Budget allocations 2008/08 to 2013/14 Police - VPU - Funded Staff 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Corporal Police Constable
 Total Funded Staff Total $ 2 6 8 2 6 8 2 6 8 2 8 10 2 8 10 2 8 10 226.808 309.497 362.346 421.509 432.869 452.937 Table A- 9: Civil Status/Birth registration, Budget allocations 2007/08 to 2013/14 Civil Status Actual Revised Estimates 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Recurrent 323.303 431.511 447.496 401.423 385.098 590.564 653.074 Capital Expenditure Birth Registration 0 0 753.030 673.137 594.304 684.161 630.197 Total 332.303 431.511 1.200.526 1.074.560 979.402 1.274.725 1.283.271 Table A- 10: Civil Status/Birth registration, number of staff 2007/08 to 2013/14 Civil Status - Funded Staff Actual Revised Estimates 2007/08 2008/09 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Rehabilitation Total Total $ 9 9 9 9 10 10 13 13 14 14 15 15 187.393 212.238 232.272 385.970 385.970 433.052 0 0 Annex 153 Table A- 11: Staff numbers MOH, 2009-2014 Programme Agency Administration General Hospitals Hospital Administration Medical services District Hospitals Hospital Administration Medical services Drug, alcohol & rehab related Hospital Administration Medical services Substance Abuse Secretariat Human Services Administration Family & Child Care Welfare Services Transit Home Senior Citizens Home Administration Services Primary Health Care Services Administration Community Services Public Health General Specific Gros Islet Polyclinic Administration Services Gender Relations Mental Health Administration Medical Services Total 2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13 2013/14 Year Source: GOSL (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013b).
154 BUDGET ANALYSIS FOR INVESTMENT IN CHILDREN IN SAINT LUCIA ISBN 978-976-95655-9-3 (pbk) Published by the UNICEF Office of the Eastern Caribbean Area First Floor, UN House, Marine Gardens, Hastings Christ Church, Barbados Tel: (246) 467 6000 Fax: (246) 426 3812 Email: bridgetown@unicef.org Website: www.unicef.org/easterncaribbean www.youtube.com/UNICEFeastcaribbean November 2015