With the season’s first Atlantic hurricane headed towards the Caribbean, most people could probably use a bit of good news. It comes from The Hague, where the Kingdom Council of Ministers approved liquidity support for St. Maarten in 2018 (see related story).
Similar assistance in the form of soft loans to the tune of 24.6 million euros (NAf. 51.7 million) was already provided by the Netherlands for 2017 after the catastrophic passage of Hurricane Irma on September 6. The country’s tourism economy and consequently its public finances took a huge blow and this year’s budget deficit stands at NAf. 197 million.
Mention of the World Bank in this context is interesting and raises the question whether the Dutch Recovery Fund it manages may be involved, even though that supposedly regards grants. With 470 million euros to spend over seven years, channelling some of this money to shore up the country’s cash position might not be the worst thing in the world.
