DECREASING ECONOMY
Member of Parliament Frankie Meyers stated the following on the decreasing economic activities on St. Maarten: “Sadly, often people’s lives are reduced to mere statistics, and the human aspects of these statistics are not taken into account. Often there is lots of pain, frustration, anger and pure desperation hiding behind these statistics. When we are talking about ‘the numbers are down’ in reference to cruise ship arrivals, passenger and crew spending, stay-over tourists and time share sales, we tend to forget the human tragedy that is unfolding behind these numbers.
This means an increase in costs followed by a huge reduction in your income, while mortgages, rent, GEBE, food, clothing, school fees, etc. still HAVE to be paid. The same goes for (small) business owners that often don’t have a large profit margins, and are feeling the direct ‘hit’ of the decreasing numbers.”
Large businesses often contribute more to the Government’s income. Not only via the taxes, but also via taxes paid by the employees that work for these businesses”, MP Meyers explained. “Less income for Government will result in a less able Government to execute projects and programs that are beneficial to the population of St. Maarten, and might lead into a faster downward spiraling economy.”
“The jobs that are lost due to companies needing to reduce their payroll expenses to stay in business, are also reflected in numbers. But as stated before, the human suffering behind these numbers is not shown. The cold fact is that this Government has not only shown to be not capable to maintain our economy, but it has even shown to be damaging to our economy. The numbers don’t lie. It is my top priority to change the numbers around, and ensure that the people of St. Maarten can provide for themselves. It’s time that we once again show the World why we are the number one destination in the Caribbean”, MP Meyers said.