The Chamber of Commerce provided some welcome news to start the week with: The first quarter of 2018 saw 279 new companies register compared to 219 during the same period last year.
At the same time 43 business closures were recorded, compared to 64 last year, while 50 became inactive, down from 82 during the first three months of 2017. The Chamber says all this points to the resilience of the local economy post-Hurricane Irma.
That may very well be the case, but one must keep in mind that businesses closing their doors or becoming inactive are not always immediately reported, while new ones need to register so they can operate. In addition, the impact much depends on size, number of workers, etc.
It will be interesting to see whether these figures correspond with findings of the current Economic Census Survey by the Department of Statistics (see related story). In any case, more than 390 of the 1,400 businesses that gave information up to now are closed, while new ones hired a combined 153 persons.
However, the reality is also that the number of people employed by 975 existing businesses surveyed dropped from 6,620 before last September to 6,104. The process of interviewing companies continues for another four weeks, so no firm conclusions can obviously be drawn until it has been completed.
Still, it certainly seems clear that things could have been a lot worse following such a catastrophic disaster. Once the rebuilding projects with means from the Trust Fund managed by the World Bank get underway, that too should help facilitate St. Maarten’s ongoing recovery.
