TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Macron says wants to diversify away from Tourism

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/fre...bean/ar-AArQZEi

Macron say will rebuild differently to deal with hurricanes and topograpghy of island.

Also, wants to diversify away from tourism as sole industry.

Diversification is a wonderful idea, one that I doubt has much of a chance at taking root. The island does not, to my knowledge, have any substantial natural resources, and its topography and climate will not support export level agriculture. The cost of transportation probably rules out manufacturing. If it had a viable alternative to tourism (for which it is ideally suited), someone would have already implemented it.

When it comes to rebuilding, there should certainly be an avoidance of wood frame structures. Based on what I have seen, poured concrete structures survived, albeit with damage. Wood frame structures seem to have been reduced to piles of large matchsticks.

Call centers?

Possibly, but I can think of two issues. First, lots of competition from almost everywhere else in the world. Two, to build even the most modest commercial space to any sort of hurricane-resistant standard will involve a real cost disadvantage, particularly when coupled with the transportation costs.

Possibly, they could go the way of Mauritius and establish a free-trade zone that would encourage manufacturing and finance.

Isn't the island already a "free trade" zone?

There are a couple of replies to this post that were removed as another poster made a political comment and when I removed it they went also. Feel free to post again but there will be NO political references, Canadian, US or otherwise.

Thank you.

They should build a cement factory and have a regional shipping hub for it. There will be a huge demand, not only on SXM, but on surrounding islands for years to come. Mother Nature will unfortunately keep the demand going.

Do they have limestone there to make concrete cement?

Actually, there was some sort of cement/concrete plant near Royal Palm but it has been history for several years. I think they produced concrete block.