100 Guilders

100 Guilders

14 September 2026

Late last week, Friday, I believe, I was listening to Mr. Grandi Kenepa’s radio program, where people can call in. Suddenly, almost all the callers were talking about the 100 guilders that had not yet been deposited into their bank accounts.

For the past few months, around 35,000 low-income citizens have been receiving an additional 100 guilders a month from the govern-ment. The measure is intended to provide some relief during this period of inflation and other economic hardship.

Those phone calls struck me. Not because people were calling about 100 guilders, but because at that moment I realized how much difference those 100 guilders apparently make to many people. To someone with a sufficient income, 100 guilders may not seem like much. But if you struggle to make ends meet every month, it can mean the difference between having enough money for groceries or not, or between being able to pay a bill or having to postpone it.

Then the Antilliaans Dagblad ran a headline about a letter from the Council of Advice stating that around 60% of households are strug-gling with debt and that this constitutes a structural threat to the sta-bility of society. I believe this figure is based, at least in part, on the recent Social Survey conducted by the Central Bureau of Statistics.

Then I read on Curaçao.nu that Curaçao, at approximately 43%, has the highest collective tax and social contribution burden within the Kingdom.

And that brings me to my point.

Officially, around 30% of households live below the income pov-erty line. But when approximately 35,000 people qualify for an addi-tional 100 guilders in government support, while a very large propor-tion of households are financially vulnerable or struggling with debt, that 30% tells only part of the story.

I would therefore not argue that 60% of the population is actually living below the poverty line. The figures do not allow us to draw that conclusion. What we can say is that the group that is financially vul-nerable appears to be much larger than the official poverty figures suggest.

And suddenly, those 100 guilders take on an entirely different meaning.

They are not a luxury. For thousands of people, this is apparently money they are waiting for. Money that has already been spent before it arrives. That may tell us more about Curaçao’s socioeconomic situ-ation than all kinds of percentages and economic growth figures.

There is no quick fix for this problem. One hundred guilders may help today, but it does not change the underlying structure. In the longer term, an important part of the solution lies in education: better education, higher qualifications and better opportunities for sustaina-ble, properly paid employment. But education alone will not be enough. The labour market, wages, the cost of living, household debt and social security all matter as well.

The 100 guilders are therefore not the problem. They are a symp-tom.

Perhaps the question we should really be asking is how it is pos-sible that, on an island whose economy has grown strongly in recent years, so many people are waiting for those 100 guilders just to make it through the month.

Miguel Goede