Part 3 in a multi-part series about US Pre-Clearance for St. Maarten and the SXM Airport. Read the nuts and bolts of pre-clearance and what it will take to make things happen in this third installment. A review.
PHILIPSBURG – Vincent Vanderpool-Wallace, the eloquent former Minister of Tourism of The Bahamas – and currently a partner of the Nassau-based Bedford&Baker Group – is a proponent of US Pre-clearance. At the June 2017 Caribavia conference in St. Maarten he told his audience that the Bahamas has had pre-clearance facilities since 1974 – that’s 45 years – at its airports in Nassau, Freeport and Paradise island.
“Pre-clearance is to our mutual benefit,” Vanderpool-Wallace said, adding that the service also leads to an increase of outbound tourism.
Pre-clearance triggered a jump of 8 percent in the number of people flying through Bahamian airports to the United States. Princess Juliana International Airport reported 420,000 US-bound passengers in 2016. If pre-clearance has a similar effect in St. Maarten, it would mean that this number would increase by 33,664 to over 453,000.
In 2016, 18 million travelers were pre-cleared before flying into the United States, representing 15 percent of all arrivals.
While these numbers are without any doubt interesting, the question remains what the benefits for St. Maarten would be. It will be more attractive to fly from Princess Juliana pre-cleared to the US because pre-cleared passengers are authorized to fly to any airport in America. In this sense, pre-clearance would strengthen the airport’s hub function.
In terms of employment there is little to be had: officers of the American Customs and Border Protection Service – more than 80 according to Finance Minister Perry Geerlings – will run the operation, so it will do little for local employment.
The 33,000 additional passengers expected to fly through the pre-clearance facility will generate around one million dollars in departure fees. Those passengers could of course also spend money in the duty free stores and in the food court.
Vanderpool-Wallace presented some interesting data at Caribavia. Fifty percent of the people who visit Orlando are from Florida and 78 percent of those visitors drive there – they don’t fly. More than 50 percent of visitors to Las Vegas also get there through a road trip. Islands in the Caribbean are depending on airlift.
Constructing the pre-clearance facility at Princess Juliana will give an impulse to the local labor market. Contractors are salivating at the thought of being involved in a project that will cost anywhere between $55 and $80 million.
This most likely also explains why the former opposition in parliament – now known as the majority of nine – is pushing so hard for this project to begin. In the background is the Cupecoy shadow government – supported by people like Silvio Matser, Theo Heyliger, heavy equipment operator Boykie Mendez and active parliamentarians Chanel Brownbill and Luc Mercelina.
Chances that construction of the facility will begin on short notice are however slim to non-existent. Finance Minister Geerlings made clear during a recent press briefing that pre-clearance has its place within the development of the airport but that the project comes with a heavy price tag.
The funding from the World Bank and the European Investment Bank focuses on reconstructing the airport whereby the pre-clearance facility is not the first priority. The funding agreements will close this week and the outgoing government will ink the deals.
As constitutional law expert Karel Frielink pointed out, parliament cannot prohibit government from entering into agreements with third parties – even though the new majority made that part of a motion it passed in parliament last week. Whichever government will take office – before or after the elections – will be stuck with the World Bank/European Investment Bank funding and all of its accompanying conditions.
Throwing those agreements out and entering into loan-agreements with other parties – like JPF and Vidanova – will result in undesirable delays of the reconstruction process; realization of the pre-clearance facility would be pushed even further into the future.
Pre-clearance has been established as a priority by the outgoing government; for forces outside of the government the process is apparently not going fast enough.
So be it. Don’t forget that pre-clearance became an issue in St. Maarten already more than four years ago. At that time, airport management said that it would do what it had to do to make the facility a reality.
Minister Geerlings confirmed this at a recent press briefing, where he noted that St. Maarten has to enter into a bilateral treaty with the United States and that the government has to take care of the tax-exempt status for the more than 80 Americans who will come to work at the airport.
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Related articles:
Part 1 – The history of US Pre-Clearance for St. Maarten
Part 2 – The nuts and bolts of US Pre-Clearance for St. Maarten
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