Failing to plan is planning to fail, so the National Development Vision (NDV) 2030 under discussion this week at Simpson Bay Resort seems a welcome effort to establish multi-annual strategies that can help ensure a certain degree of stability. A quick scan on the state of the economy was used to gain insight.
The lack of readily available current and reliable data is acknowledged as a challenge. “Long-term planning and forecasting of the future of St. Maarten can no longer be based on assumptions and ad-hoc reactionary policy decisions, but must be evidence-based, which is only possible with reliable data,” the report states.
While few would argue otherwise, fixing this problem costs money. The same goes for suggested capital investments in schools, sewage treatment, waste processing, sports facilities, the prison and general infrastructure such as roads and beautification projects.
Although the Dutch-sponsored Trust Fund has been playing a role in tackling some of these issues, the country’s own resources are very limited and that’s not likely to dramatically change any time soon. The need to address financial sustainability with urgency is obvious, but easier said than done with a still vulnerable recovery of the highly seasonal dominant hospitality industry and huge public debts incurred to deal with devastating impacts of both the September 2017 hurricanes and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The goal here is not to discourage all involved in preparing the NDV and related policies going forward, merely to remind them that most ideas, including lofty ones, tend to look good on paper. Executing them, however, can often be quite a different story.
To be taken seriously, intentions should in principle be realistically feasible. Anything less is little more than daydreaming.
The document also talks about an approach where growth is not misinterpreted as development. That sounds good, but under the present circumstances no growth will make any meaningful development hard to come by.
