Dear Editor,
Imagine if a natural disaster like a hurricane occurs and you can fix all the damage in one day. That would mean that the entire cost of the damage would be limited to the repair of the damage plus the losses incurred on that one day.
On the other hand, if the country closes down for a year the country would suffer losses due to the fact that revenues both public and private would stop and there would be a need for someone to cover the cost. not only of the hurricane damage but also the cost of being closed for a year. There would also be the added cost of further weather damage to vulnerable assets.
Now imagine you are the decision maker of a donor country and you would like to support the rebuilding of an associated state in the Caribbean and you decide to donate US $525 million.
It seems obvious that to provide the most value for your donation. the faster you get these funds injected into the economy. the less the losses through closure would be.
Let us imagine that you are reluctant to execute the funds donation through government distribution because you have reason to believe that the funds will not reach their intended goals and be misspent. Let’s use the broad term “leakage” to describe the percentage of funds that would not reach their intended and effective destination.
The ultimate question for this planning challenge is to know the relationship between the total value of the “leakage” compared to the cost of a delay of the injection into the economy of the funds. It seems reasonable to expect that the donor country has considered this matter and used it as a factor in its determination of policy.
It is unquestionably true that donor countries know that a degree of “leakage” is inevitable in the same manner that an administrative cost is to be expected.
If this example were to be that of St. Maarten and the Netherlands. the kingdom partners. this discussion should be able to be honestly carried on. And this discussion must be on the basis of the best hard data available. This data can only come from St. Maarten which collects and manages the data on economic activity in St. Maarten and from the finance ministry which provides figures on public sector revenues.
This is why I am calling on the Ministries of TEATT [Tourism, Economic Affairs, Transport and Telecommunication – Ed.] and Finance in St. Maarten to provide usable data that can show how the losses through delay compare to the “leakage” so that we can all judge the quality of the decisions made on the basis of the best evidence.
We then should have a good discussion with our kingdom partners in the context of the mutual support on the best planning for natural disaster damage minimalization.
Would anybody deny that this would be a useful and productive discussion for all parties?
Robbie Ferron
