a dutch saying goes : “ doing everything on your own is adding up. collaboration is multiplying. ” however, the joint effort is not limited to collaboration between the private and public sectors. each member of our community plays a part in the experience of tourists in our country. bis central bankers ’ speeches therefore, it is important to change our mindset and become more service - oriented and customer driven. let me finish by saying that we need to be more ambitious and aim for excellence. a wise man once said : “ the biggest risk is not taking any risk... in a world that is changing quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks. ” ladies and gentlemen, i thank you for your attention and wish you a fruitful meeting. bis central bankers ’ speeches

risk capital is that hotel and other major investment projects in the tourism sector are typically riskier and more complex than other investment projects and, hence, require specially designed terms of financing. investment projects in the tourism sector, such as the construction of hotels, have relatively high fixed costs and high operating expenses. in addition, hotel projects present a number of risks associated with the project itself, the players involved in the project, and the project ’ s financial structure. hotel projects also must take into account adverse external risks, such as economic and political stability and exposure to natural disasters. for these reasons, commercial banks and institutional investors are reluctant to provide the necessary financing to the tourism industry. consequently, private investors who cannot meet the requirement of sufficient equity demanded by the financial institutions will not be able to realize their projects and promising investment projects remain forever in the pipeline. this situation has typically created certain challenges in our region and even had unintended consequences for the industry. nevertheless, this growth path should be pursued. ladies and gentlemen, you will not be surprised to learn that i do not share these concerns. on the contrary, i am of the firm view that the time for muddling through is over. blindly super - imposing on us solutions that might have worked elsewhere, is done at the expense of more problems in the future. to this point, i refer to the much - debated aqualectra and the sint maarten harbour bonds that were bought by the bank. as i mentioned, as part of the constitutional restructuring of the netherlands antilles, the netherlands provided debt relief to the constituent parties of the former netherlands antilles. by taking over the entire outstanding public debt of both the central government and the government of the island territory of curacao, the market of government securities dried up overnight. even with this nafl 4 billion market of government bonds, institutional investors thought there were insufficient investment instruments available in the country. in addition, with the disappearance of that market, the central bank was also deprived of an important bis central bankers ’ speeches instrument in its arsenal for open market operations, thereby constraining the effectiveness of monetary policy. to provide impetus and further develop this market, the central bank embarked on an asset purchase program to build its portfolio of corporate bonds. although views of those operations differed, the ultimate goal was to create a new instrument for the conduct of monetary policy in line with our mandate – namely, to promote the stability of the guilder. the purchases of these bonds resulted in lower