The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Triibune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

The National Development Plan (NDP) Secretariat plans to have more intense public outreach on the goals it is seeking to achieve, according to the Government’s lead official on the initiative.

Dr Nicola Virgil-Rolle, speaking with Tribune Business following a recent update on the  National Development Plan Vision 2040, said: “We are at the place now where the first draft of the plan is with our steering committee, which is giving us comments on that.

“We are then moving it on to Cabinet, and then we begin a very vigorous period of discussions on the actual strategy associated with each of those goals; the action steps, the deliverables, all of the elements of the plan with the Bahamian public. We will refine that over the next few months so that we can finalise the plan.”

Vision2040 focuses on four main policy pillars - the economy, governance, social policy and the environment, both natural and built.

“We will be having deeper discussions with the public and more outreach to go over each of the goals in detail,” said Dr Virgil-Rolle, adding that the draft National Development Plan consists of some 500 strategy pages.

“It’s also important to note that each set of actions have outputs and outcomes and timeframe for delivery, who is responsible and a prioritisation for the system so that we can plan out how to to actually implement that,” said Dr Virgil-Rolle.

    “The College of the Bahamas has agreed to serve as sort of the watchdog over the plan’s implementation, so they will be monitoring implementation by publishing an annual report on the process of implementation and looking at the monitoring evaluation framework around the plan.”