There is increasingly little doubt that Curaçao has entered a significantly stronger economic period.
Tourism continues to break records. Hotels are being built. New businesses are opening. Government revenues are improving. Employment has recovered, and the Tax Department recently reported that tax and social premium revenues during the second quarter of 2026 reached Cg 663.8 million — Cg 57.4 million above budget.
These are achievements Curaçao should not dismiss.
For years, the island discussed economic stagnation, public deficits, unemployment and the need to restore confidence. Economic growth was desperately needed.
Now that growth has returned, however, another question becomes impossible to avoid:
Who is actually feeling it?
Recent developments paint a much more complicated picture of Curaçao's recovery.
Aqualectra had disconnected 1,672 customers from water and electricity because of payment arrears as of March 18.
The latest CBS Social Survey indicates that a large proportion of households struggle to meet debt obligations.
The Council of Advice has meanwhile made an important point: poverty reduction cannot simply remain one of many political ambitions that governments pursue when money and time permit. Economic security relates to the government's responsibility toward fundamental social rights.
These developments should force Curaçao to reconsider how it measures success.
GDP matters.
Government revenue matters.
Tourist arrivals matter.
Investment matters.
But none of these figures tells us by itself whether the average household is becoming stronger.
An economy can grow while housing becomes less affordable. Tourism can break records while workers struggle with grocery bills. Government revenues can exceed expectations while households fall behind on electricity payments.
Those realities are not contradictions. They are signals about how the benefits and costs of economic growth are distributed.
The recently published Tourism Carrying Capacity Study makes that point from another direction. Curaçao is attracting extraordinary numbers of visitors, but researchers estimate that a significant portion of tourism spending leaves the economy through imports, foreign ownership and international supply chains.
Meanwhile, the consequences of growth — more traffic, greater demand for housing, pressure on infrastructure and the need for more public services — remain largely here.
That does not mean Curaçao should stop growing.
Quite the opposite.
Economic growth creates the resources necessary to improve society. Without investment, entrepreneurship and successful businesses, there is ultimately little wealth to distribute.
But Curaçao has reached the stage where simply producing growth is no longer enough.
The next challenge is improving the quality of that growth.
Can more tourism spending reach local companies?
Can young Curaçaoans obtain the qualifications necessary for the thousands of jobs being created?
Can more families afford a home?
Can wages keep pace with living costs?
Can economic expansion generate enough public revenue to improve roads, schools and neighborhoods?
And perhaps most importantly: can a person who works full-time participate meaningfully in the prosperity that economic statistics say Curaçao is experiencing?
Those should become the measurements of the next phase of Curaçao's economic development.
The government should resist the temptation to interpret strong tax collections and visitor numbers as evidence that the job is finished.
They are evidence that Curaçao now has an opportunity.
A growing economy gives policymakers considerably more room to tackle structural problems than a shrinking economy does. That opportunity should be used to strengthen education, reduce barriers to entrepreneurship, expand affordable housing, address problematic household debt and make it easier for local businesses to participate in the industries driving growth.
The objective should not be to redistribute prosperity after it has been created elsewhere.
It should be to structure the economy so that more Curaçaoans participate in creating that prosperity in the first place.
For years, Curaçao asked how it could get its economy growing again.
That question is increasingly being answered.
The question for the coming years is harder:
How do we make that growth work for Curaçao?
Because the strongest economy is ultimately not the one with the most tourists, the highest tax revenue or the largest GDP.
It is the one in which economic progress produces measurable progress in the lives of its people.