The Anti-Poverty Platform has a point (see Friday paper). Locally applying the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) poverty line for the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region isn’t very realistic due to St. Maarten’s relatively high cost of living.
Having a decent existence on the minimum monthly wage of 1,500 Netherlands Antillean guilders is already hard, particularly for a sizeable family, but doing so with about 70 per cent of that amount can practically be called a “mission impossible.”
Yet the platform says 11 per cent of the Dutch side’s households were in that situation of making NAf 1,000-1,100 back in 2017 and that has now supposedly risen to 14 per cent. This includes seniors depending only on their AOV old age pension, of whom many, especially immigrants, receive far less because they were not residents long enough to qualify for the full payment.
How do people with such a low income, certainly those lacking savings, an own home or other property, survive? They often work more than one job during their productive years and/or live together in large numbers and crowded conditions, etc., to make ends meet.
However, simply increasing the minimum wage under the present economic circumstances could have serious implications in the sense of potential layoffs and even business closures. Similarly, any AOV hike will probably require raising the premiums of the employers and/or workers.
What’s more, significant additional operational expenses for companies will likely – at times out of necessity – be passed on to clients. As the island is considered rather pricey as it is, this seems an ill-advised scenario also regarding the competitive aspect for the destination and its tourism economy.
Of greater benefit might be to reduce the cost of living, but that’s easier said than done. In a free market prices are determined by supply and demand, along with fair trade and healthy competition.
It must be said, local supermarkets try to outdo each other in terms of pricing, as witnessed by their frequent advertisements with specials in this newspaper. Government also publishes periodic price comparisons on its information page, so – to some degree – a lot depends on being a conscious grocery shopper too.
And then there is the basket of basic goods for which maximum prices are set. Of course, these must be sufficiently controlled and enforced by authorities to ensure compliance, which is not always the case.
One important factor is the generally high rent asked for homes. When it comes to lower income housing the Rent Tribunal can be a big help, but there are still staffing problems as Parliament was recently told.
Perhaps it would be wise to start making better use of existing consumer protection first, before saddling the country with increased personnel cost that may backfire into spiralling costs and a negative socioeconomic impact.
