Saint Lucia is a sovereign island country in the eastern Caribbean Sea on the boundary with the Atlantic Ocean. It covers a land area of 617 square kilometres and reported a population of 165,595 in the 2010 census. Its capital is Castries.
On February 22, 1979, Saint Lucia became an independent state of the Commonwealth of Nations associated with the United Kingdom. Tourism is vital to Saint Lucia’s economy. Most of the tourists to Saint Lucia arrive by cruise ship.
Saint Lucia’s currency is the East Caribbean Dollar, a regional currency shared among members of the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union (ECU).
With two Nobel Prize winners, Saint Lucia boasts the world’s second highest ratio of Nobel laureates compared to the total population. Sir Arthur Lewis won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1979, and poet Derek Walcott received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1992.