Philipsburg: --- While being very reserved finance commissioner Xavier Blackman said dollarization for the Curacao and St. Maarten remains an option. Blackman said there were a number of case studies that were presented during the conference. He said based on these case studies it was revealed that only countries that were in a crisis dollarize. Most of the Latin Countries that dollarize followed recommendations from the IMF.
Blackman said the Director of the Central Bank Emsley Tromp said the reason he believes it was necessary to dollarize was because of the deteriorating balance of payments of the Netherlands Antilles, and given that, if another crisis was to occur then it would hit the islands harder.
Blackman said assuming that the financial situation will improve when the islands take on country status, since the federal government layer will be removed, which would allow both future countries to keep their revenues.
When that happens then these countries would no longer have their revenue spread out especially to the BES islands and when that happens then their should be a healthier finances which would ensure a healthier balance of payments. Blackman said in his opinion if the above is acquired then the argument given by the Central Bank would become obsolete. He said he is not sure if dollarization would address the problems.
However, the finance commissioner agreed that there should be more discussions including the broader community. He said government is busy preparing to hold information sessions on the matter to look at the future monetary system for the countries.
The commissioner said he also believes that the public has to be involved in this process since the people need to know what would happen to their money. Asked if he has preference on the matter, he said his official position on the issue is that St. Maarten and Curacao is working on creating a common currency for the future countries, while his personal position on dollarization is that is has pros and cons.
However, he said the list of cons is just as long as the list of pros. He said while one would said that it is more practical but admitted that this is a very hard decision to make. He queried why fix something that is not broken and one has to be very careful when fixing or changing something that is working.
