PHILIPSBURG – Medicosmetics provides faulty testers for people suffering from diabetes, the Antipoverty Platform and the Consumers Coalition said through their spokesman Drs. Raymond Jessurun at a press conference last week Thursday. SZV acknowledges that there are problems with Medicosmetics but declined to react to the specific allegations Jessurun made during the press conference. Medicosmetics is established in Cole Bay; its Facebook-page mentions Jan H.R. Beaujon as its director. The company positions itself as “a wholesaler and distributor of ethical pharmaceutical supplies.” Medicosmetics also sells medical health supplements, professional hair and skin products and “home health care supplies from beds…
Author: The Publisher
PHILIPSBURG – Prijsstijgingen in de supermarkten zorgen voor een storm van klachten op social media. Food shoppers plaatsen foto’s van items die twee weken geleden een stuk minder kostten dan nu. ‘Ze nekken ons met deze prijzen’, schrijft een klant. De eigenaresse van een supermarkt in Philipsburg zegt dat dit ook geldt voor winkeliers. “Onze marges zijn nog maar de helft, of minder zelfs.” De verhuurder van het pand waar de supermarkt is gevestigd is op 31 maart de huur komen innen. Het personeel was al eerder uitbetaald. Aan het begin van deze maand heeft de winkelier niet veel geld…
PHILIPSBURG – Price increases in supermarkets trigger a storm of complaints on social media. Food shoppers post pictures of items that cost a lot less two weeks ago than they do now. “They are killing us with these prices,” one customer writes. The owner of a supermarket in Philipsburg says that this also applies to retailers. “Our margins are only half, or less, even.” The landlord of the building where the supermarket is located came to collect the rent on March 31. Staff had been paid before. At the beginning of this month, the retailer does not have much money…
PHILIPBURG – Party for Progress Members of Parliament Melissa Gumbs and Raeyhon Peterson walked out of an online meeting of parliament on Monday when it was about to handle the resignation of the (already departed) Chief Financial Officer at the airport. The meeting had to be adjourned because after the departure of Gumbs and Peterson it no longer had a quorum. In a way, the PFP wrote history: it is the first faction to log off from a digital meeting of parliament. PFP party leader Gumbs issued a statement to clarify the decision to leave. “The personal decision of a…
PHILIPSBURG – Use the balance of the World Bank Trust Fund to finance a $200 million emergency economic response to support the local economy. That is the focus of a proposal by a private sector task force to the Ministry of Tourism and Economic Affairs (TEATT). The business community will need support for a period of seven to eight months, its report states. The suggested measures include 90 percent payroll subsidy for a period of three months and a 75 percent subsidy for the next five months. Fixed expenditures should be fully covered according to the proposal. It furthermore suggests…
PHILIPSBURG – CIBC First Caribbean donates $250,000 through its international ComTrust Foundation for the purchase of COVID-19 testing kits to the sixteen countries across the Caribbean where it operates. If evenly divided, each country will receive $15,625. The bank will make its donations through its operating companies in each country. Colette Delaney, the bank’s Chief Executive Officer and also the chairlady of the Comtrust Foundation, announced the donations in a press statement, saying, “Testing was one of the main weapons in the arsenal against the spread of the disease. Community spread is one of the main ways the virus is…
On St. Maarten, banks and the government are advising the general population to use guilders as much as possible, as a way to save dollars. I agree wholeheartedly with this advice. Here is why. When the dollars stop flowing into our economy, using guilders for our daily transactions will keep our economy going and save the dollars to pay for our imports. When those dollars run out, we will have to use our ‘gold backed’-Guilder to buy new dollars to pay for new imports. Hence the title of this article, The Golden Guilder.
By Cdr. Bud Slabbaert In these difficult times when we know that economic hardships have to be countered and solutions need to be found, there are realistic opportunities. There is one development model that may be the solution to contribute to three needs that are important under the current and short-term circumstances: a desperate need for income when employment is not available a cornerstone for diversification of an economy rejuvenating or strengthening the middle class. It may come in two steps. The first step would be the development of ‘home industry’ or originally called ‘cottage industry’ and sometimes mentioned as…
By Hilbert Haar The Indian Merchants Association (IMA) is among the private sector organizations that chose the St. Maarten Hospitality and Trade Association (SHTA) not even a week ago “to speak on its behalf for continued representation and information.” But only a few days later the IMA broke ranks and issued a press release of its own under the ominous headline ‘Economic doom, mass closures and layoffs on the horizon for St. Maarten’. As far as content goes, the press release does not differ significantly from what the SHTA communicated earlier. But there is more to it. One of the…
~ Economic Doom, Mass Closures and Layoffs on the Horizon for Sint Maarten. ~ PHILIPSBURG — In reference to the proposed draft Stimulus Plan, which was made public, the Indian Merchants Association (IMA), SMTA, SHTA and SMMTA expresses its shock at the callous disregard of St. Maarten employees and businesses in general and the economy in particular during these unprecedented testing times of crisis in the form of a Global Pandemic. While the focus of the policy makers has been mainly on people who can face unemployment or self-employed persons, it fails to address the real issues and hardships of…
