If there were any remaining doubts as to how serious the current financial situation of St. Maarten is, Thursday’s presentation in Parliament on the 2018 draft budget ought to have removed them.
Finance Minister Mike Ferrier even talked about the risk of going bankrupt. While the deficit estimate was reduced from the earlier 257 million to 197 million Antillean guilders, that’s still huge also when compared to the total expected revenues of NAf. 303.4 million. A list of cost-cutting measures the Minister proposed could save another NAf. 20 million, not nearly enough to close the gap. A full revival of the dominant hospitality industry to restore Government’s income to previous levels is the obvious answer. That will require having the airport at its former capacity and the reopening of major resorts, for which time is of the essence. Although just “giving a bag of cash,” as some have put it, to the private sector entities involved can never be the intention, assisting them where responsible and feasible to come back online sooner rather than later is actually a no-brainer. Also providing soft loans for other local employers to tide these over seems like a good idea. The execution of projects with the 470-million-euro (US $526 million) Trust Fund at the World Bank made available by the Netherlands too should have a much-needed positive impact by creating jobs and business activity. It is important that part of these are focused on facilitating the recovery of the tourism economy, where the money to provide public services is earned in the first place.
