WILLEMSTAD – Curaçao’s long-standing decision to keep its currency firmly anchored to the US dollar is not driven by nostalgia or political preference, but by economic realism. That was the central message delivered last week by a senior official of the Central Bank of Curaçao and Sint Maarten during a public presentation on monetary policy and the future of the dollar.
In a world marked by geopolitical shifts, rising debt levels, and growing talk of “de-dollarization,” the question is increasingly raised whether Curaçao should reconsider its fixed exchange rate regime. According to the Central Bank, the answer remains clear: as long as Curaçao’s economy is overwhelmingly dollar-based, abandoning the dollar peg would introduce instability rather than independence.
More than 65 percent of Curaçao’s international transactions are conducted in US dollars. Tourism, imports, exports, fuel pricing, and a large share of financial contracts are all dollar-denominated. This reality means that the island’s inflation, purchasing power, and external stability are largely imported through the dollar, leaving little room for an independent monetary course.
The Central Bank emphasized that its primary mandate under the fixed exchange rate system is not to stimulate growth or control inflation, but to safeguard the credibility of the currency by maintaining the dollar peg. Since its introduction in 1971, that peg has never been broken or devalued — a record the Bank describes as a cornerstone of economic confidence.
Against a backdrop of global uncertainty, the Bank’s message was blunt: monetary stability for a small, open economy like Curaçao is achieved not through experimentation, but through predictability.