Saba’s socio-economic development strategy aims to achieve sustainable and inclusive welfare growth. It focuses on improving quality of life, protecting Saba’s natural and cultural assets, strengthening the business environment, and increasing the island’s resilience to long-term challenges such as aging and climate change.

The socio-economic development strategy for Saba provides direction for policies, investments, and projects. It was developed by Economic Bureau Amsterdam (EBA), commissioned by the Public Entity Saba and the Dutch central government.

It serves as a long-term framework and establishes direction and priorities that can guide coordinated decision-making between the Public Entity and the Dutch government in the coming years. Socio-economic development on Saba requires an integrated approach: policy measures are strongly interconnected and reinforce each other. Implementing only selected measures may improve specific areas but is not sufficient to achieve the broader objectives. At the same time, while encouraging the active pursuit of opportunities in the private sector, the strategy acknowledges the structural characteristics of Saba as a small island, including its reliance on the public sector and imports.

Key preconditions for achieving sustainable welfare growth include improving connectivity, addressing bottlenecks in labor migration, expanding housing availability and affordability, strengthening the statistical basis for policymaking, and increasing implementation capacity within the public entity.

The strategy also identifies priorities across key policy areas: economy and labor market, infrastructure, cost of living, demographics and health, education, and nature. For example, economic priorities include strengthening tourism and research activities, and improving energy affordability and sustainability. Nature conservation is central across policy domains. Strong natural ecosystems contribute not only to ecological resilience, but also to long-term economic resilience, as tourism depends on Saba’s position as a nature destination. In infrastructure, priorities focus on addressing maintenance backlogs, and ensuring sufficient funding and execution capacity.

Successful implementation of the strategy requires cooperation between local and central government supported by clear governance, as well as active involvement of stakeholders and the local community.