The socioeconomic strategy for Saba aims to achieve sustainable and inclusive prosperity growth. The focus is on improving quality of life, protecting Saba’s natural and cultural values, strengthening the business climate, and increasing the island’s resilience to long-term challenges such as population ageing and climate change.
The socioeconomic development strategy for Saba provides direction for policy, investments, and projects. The strategy was developed by Economisch Bureau Amsterdam (EBA), commissioned by the Public Entity Saba and the Dutch central government.
The strategy serves as a long-term framework, establishing directions and priorities that will guide coordinated decision-making between the Public Entity and the Dutch central government in the years ahead. This requires an integrated approach, as policy measures are closely interconnected and mutually reinforcing. Implementing only part of the measures may lead to specific improvements, but will be insufficient to achieve the broader objectives. At the same time, the strategy acknowledges the structural characteristics of Saba as a small island, including its dependence on the public sector and on imports.
Key preconditions for achieving sustainable prosperity growth include improving connectivity, addressing bottlenecks in labour migration, increasing the availability and affordability of housing, strengthening the statistical foundation for policymaking, and enhancing the implementation capacity within the public entity.
In addition, the strategy identifies priorities across several policy areas: the economy and labour market, infrastructure, cost of living, demography and health, education, and nature. Economic priorities include strengthening tourism and research activities, as well as improving the affordability and sustainability of energy. Nature conservation is a central theme across multiple domains. Strong natural ecosystems contribute not only to ecological resilience, but also to economic resilience, as tourism depends on Saba’s position as a nature destination. In the area of infrastructure, the focus is on eliminating maintenance backlogs and ensuring sufficient funding and implementation capacity.
Successful implementation of the strategy requires cooperation between the local and central governments, supported by clear governance arrangements, as well as active involvement of stakeholders and the local community.
