The Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament has roughly the same issues with the draft consensus law to establish the Caribbean Body for Reform and Development COHO as Curaçao, Aruba and St. Maarten. To what extent State Secretary of Kingdom Relations Alexandra van Huffelen will be able to remove these concerns remains to be seen, as even her own D66 party has serious doubts.
One needs to keep in mind that the legislative trajectory, after some adjustments to address reservations expressed by the Council of State, had been all but completed when she took over from her predecessor Raymond Knops. It was he who made agreeing to the proposed COHO a condition to receive continued coronavirus-crisis-related liquidity support from the Netherlands plus the Kingdom Council of Ministers RMR giving its required permission for the Dutch Caribbean countries to deviate from the balanced budget in the Financial Supervision Act.
As pointed out earlier, the execution of so-called “country packages” containing restructuring measures and investments to be monitored and ensured by the COHO is what people will be confronted with. These and their implementation agenda are supposed to make the three islands more resilient and sustainable.
A Temporary Work Organisation (TWO) has already been making the necessary preparations at the technical level. This means a possible revision of the COHO should not have to lead to undesirable delay.
However, things have changed since plans were first made, most notably due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and its impact on world prices. While it’s understandable that government needs enough earnings, under the current socioeconomic circumstances great restraint should be exercised to prevent overburdening the private sector, which – at the end of the day – must produce the means to cover public spending, including lifting the 12.5 per cent benefits cut for civil servants, reducing the fuel excise tax, etc.
St. Maarten’s hard-hit dominant hospitality industry is barely rebounding from the two-year pandemic and before that devastating Hurricane Irma in September 2017. With the cost of both living and doing business now rising quickly, the necessary prudence seems called for.
Priority must be given to supporting the local recovery, for example by removing the Electronic Health Authorisation System (EHAS) like many other destinations. Finding ways to attract visitors also during the upcoming low season deserves the necessary attention too.
Some moderate and reasonable income-increasing steps may certainly be considered without major risks for the people’s livelihood, but anything too drastic could easily prove counterproductive. Conventional wisdom has it that when in the middle of a storm, you don’t rock the boat.
