The Saint Lucian government, CLEAR-LAC and the CDB collaborate in 2026 to design a national M&E system strengthening plan, aligned with the country’s development strategy

Mr. Paul Hilaire, Mrs. Charlin Louisy Regis and Mr. Cristian Crespo (from left to right)

CLEAR-LAC and the Caribbean Development Bank’s (CDB) Office of Independent Evaluation have developed a partnership to strengthen evaluation capacities and national monitoring and evaluation (M&E) systems across the Caribbean. Within this collaboration, CLEAR-LAC’s Executive Director, Cristian Crespo, visited Saint Lucia in February 2026.

The partnership represents strengthened collaboration amongst CLEAR-LAC, the CDB and Saint Lucia’s Department of Economic Development, the organization in charge of shaping the country´s Medium-Term Development Strategy (MTDS) and formulating the National Development Plan (NDP). During the visit, Mr. Crespo met with Mr. Paul Hilarie, Permanent Secretary of the Department of Economic Development and Mrs. Charlin Louisy Regis, Chief Economist of the Department, and multiple members of the organization.

CLEAR-LAC, CDB and Saint Lucia’s collaboration started with the development of an M&E system strengthening plan, to be finalized by April 2026. The document highlights five goals, among these are the institutional strengthening of Saint Lucia’s system, generating a systematic and coordinated planning and M&E system, developing a strong human resource structure for M&E activities, generating mechanisms to disseminate and increase the use of evidence and generating an enabling environment for M&E.

The plan identifies multiple initiatives to strengthen Saint Lucia’s M&E system. Regarding institutionalization, these are facilitating the development of a results-based management policy and an M&E framework for the MTDS 2026-2030. The document has a diagnostic part which relies on the Monitoring and Evaluation System Analysis (MESA) conducted in the country, on inputs from the new MTDS and from Saint Lucia Department of Economic Development team.

Mrs. Regis expressed that “Saint Lucia welcomes the technical assistance being offered by CLEAR LAC and the CDB, to strengthen the country’s M&E system. We recognize the importance of adopting a more targeted and systematic approach to the planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of development interventions. The planned assistance is expected to advance Saint Lucia’s efforts towards this transition.”

Mr. Crespo’s visit coincided with four stakeholders’ consultation workshops organized by the Department of Economic Development to provide inputs for the MTDS 2026-2030 and the National Development Plan 2026-2040. CLEAR-LAC presented in two of these workshops, introducing the Centre and the joint partnership with the country and the CDB to key representatives from the private and public sectors of Saint Lucia. Through its M&E system strengthening agenda, CLEAR-LAC will contribute to these strategic documents.

During an interview in the context of the participatory workshops led by the Saint Lucian government, Mr. Crespo emphasized, “With M&E we learn, and with learning we improve the action of government. The role of CLEAR-LAC is important, we strengthen institutional capacities,… individual capacities and the enabling environment for M&E and evidence use in Saint Lucia government”.

During the visit to Saint Lucia, CLEAR-LAC also met with key staff of the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) Commission led by Sherma Beroo, Project Manager from the Office of the Director General of the OECS, to explore synergies for strengthening evaluation capacities within the Eastern Caribbean region. OECS and CLEAR-LAC later agreed to collaborate in facilitating the participation of five representatives from the Eastern Caribbean in the CLEAR-LAC UC-Chile course Introduction to Monitoring and Evaluation of Public Policies. This course, one initiative of the collaboration with CDB, will start in May 2026.