A workshop regarding the Strategic Economic Plan 2012-2022 will take place on March 22.
The workshop is an opportunity for the immediate design and execution of a long-term vision and strategic direction dealing with the future and competitive position of Country Sint Maarten.
The rationale for the plan is to bring together key players behind the country’s economic and social development, to draft a long-term direction towards a common sustainable goal.
The goal of the envisioned plan is to create broad support for the future strategic course of the country and to achieve a sustainable increase in the standard of living and prosperity for all citizens of Sint Maarten.
The goals should be achieved through education and training; increase employment; increased business activities; growth in foreign investment (Capital and skills/knowledge); well-balanced wealth distribution; social cohesiveness; and good governance.
In developing the plan, requirements are participation; a "can do" attitude; public-private partnership and private financing.
During the development of the plan, some performance metrics of best practices from the World Economic Forum will be used.
The World Economic Forum’s Competiveness Report, has over the last three decades, become one of the world’s most respected assessments of national competiveness, providing a mirror image of a nation’s economic environment and its ability to achieve sustained levels of prosperity and growth.
"The objective is to produce a strategic economic plan for the next 10-years that would guide our country’s economic development. This plan is being produced at a time when the world went through the global financial and economic crisis which was described as the most serious since the Great Depression of October 1929.
"As a people and as a country, we must take stock after having gone through constitutional change in 2010, and are currently in the process of building Country Sint Maarten.
"During these periods of progress and positive change, the country has also been confronted with various challenges due to the world crisis, however, we have still been able to present a first balanced country budget in 2011, and will be approving within short the second balanced country budget.
"As a country we cannot lose sight of strategic economic planning and looking at five and 10-years down the road. The workshop is essential in grasping the opportunities of the future for the people of Sint Maarten.
"We want to build a quality society where the hopes, dreams and aspirations of the Sint Maarten people are key to national economic development," Minister of Tourism & Economic Affairs Hon. Franklin Meyers said on Tuesday.
The process in developing the Economic Strategic Plan will be facilitated by KPMG Advisory Services.