Who Counts the Cash?

St. Maarten’s mini supermarket boom wears the costume of progress. New signs, bright lights, and shelves stacked to the ceiling suggest convenience and economic activity. However, drive a little slower, walk a little closer, and a different picture comes into focus: a retail explosion in low-income neighborhoods, cash-heavy and semi-invisible, quietly reshaping who earns, who pays, and who gets left with the bill.

In a simple street-by-street count in 12 residential areas, I documented 43 mini supermarkets. They cluster along roads such as A.T. Illidge, Sucker Garden, and Dutch Quarter, with six in Middle Region alone, only one of which is locally owned. What looks like growth starts to look less like development and more like a loophole with a logo when you ask basic questions: who owns these stores, how are they regulated, and who, if anyone, is tracking what flows through their tills.

Step inside enough of these shops and the pattern becomes hard to ignore. In many stores, an outdated cash register sits on the counter, the drawer open, sometimes turned off, and often barely used. The real action is underneath the surface. Cash is kept in pans or drawers under the desk, out of the customer’s line of sight, while coins sit in bowls beside the register instead of in the cash drawer. Of the 43 stores visited, only three had a modern touchscreen register with a scanner visibly in use. On many shelves, everyday items, rice, oil, snacks, and frozen goods sat without price tags. You find out what you will pay not when you pick an item up, but when you place it on the counter.

That may sound like a small annoyance until you follow the money. A retail sector that runs largely on cash, with registers present but not consistently used, is a sector in which the tax system struggles to see. No itemized receipts, no consistent scanner use, and no digital trail. A government that relies on consumption-based tax revenue is left guessing how much is being sold. In a country already warned that weak tax administration and poor enforcement undermine public finances, a mushrooming network of low-visibility, cash-based outlets is not a side issue. This is a leak in the boat.

On paper, food safety is tightly regulated. The authorities are responsible for ensuring that all food, water, ice, and drinks sold on St. Maarten are safe, and every food establishment, from supermarkets to ice producers, is supposed to have a formal control plan and comply with inspection and testing rules, supported by a national laboratory that can test food and water when the government calls on it. The question is whether inspections and testing are keeping pace with the rapid spread of dozens of new mini-markets in low-income neighborhoods, many of which sell repackaged produce and household ice with little visible information about how or where they were handled.

However, local producers tell a different story. Many describe being constantly visited by inspectors and being repeatedly required to submit products for laboratory testing at a frequency and cost that borders on harassment. They do not question the need for food safety, but they do question a system where the few remaining local producers are tightly policed while a growing field of foreign-owned mini markets, selling repackaged goods and household ice, seems to expand faster than the oversight meant to keep everyone safe.

This imbalance does not stop at health inspections. Talking to long-standing, locally owned businesses, a familiar story emerges: disputes, liens on assets, frequent assessments and inspections, aggressive collection letters, and audits that drag on while refunds remain unpaid. These businesses hire accountants, file on time, and keep records, yet they often feel like the easiest targets in town. Meanwhile, in neighborhood after neighborhood, mini supermarkets with registers turned off and cash tucked under desks continue to multiply. The message is subtle but clear: if you comply, you get scrutinized; if you stay off the grid, you get space to breathe.

This skewed playing field does not just distort competition, it reshapes entire communities. Look at where the mini markets are. They are packed into working-class and low-income neighborhoods: Middle Region, Dutch Quarter, Sucker Garden, A.T. Illidge and parts of Cole Bay. They are often located right beside lotto booths and other cash-intensive businesses. Every day, these shops pull small purchases from households that are already stretched thin. But how much of that money returns to the community in the form of taxes, local reinvestment, or decent wages? When six supermarkets serve Middle Region and only one is locally owned, the answer is: not much.

Then there is the question that nobody wants to answer out loud: licensing. How did dozens of nearly identical supermarkets with the same layout, similar product mix, and similar cash practices secure permission to operate in dense residential districts in such a short time? How many licenses are in the name of front owners while the real operators remain behind the scenes? The rules exist on paper, yet there is little visible transparency about who actually holds which license and under which conditions. When the same model repeats itself across Middle Region, A.T. Illidge Road, Dutch Quarter, Cole Bay, and beyond, it stops looking like coincidence and starts looking like a system.

None of this is inevitable. Cash-heavy, under-recorded retail is a known problem in many countries, and others have already figured out how to close the gap between what is sold and what is reported. Mandatory fiscal point-of-sale systems and online cash registers, where every transaction passes through a registered device, have pushed up reported turnover and tax revenues in places that once faced similar challenges. When every sale leaves a trace, the shadow shrinks. The technology is available, the examples exist, and the lesson is simple: if you want to count the money, you have to see the transaction.

For St. Maarten, the path ahead is not mysterious. It looks like this: require modern point-of-sale systems for all supermarkets and mini-markets above a modest turnover, and fine businesses that treat the register as decoration. Make receipts non-negotiable, even for a single chicklet. Demand visible prices for every item so that customers know what they are paying before they reach the counter. Publish clear licensing criteria and a public registry of license holders, so that fronting becomes harder and accountability easier. Back that up with regular, unannounced food safety inspections in the neighborhoods where these stores are multiplying, and make the results public so people can see who is playing by the rules.

This is not about punishing foreign owners or protecting local businesses from competition. It is about fairness and visibility. If local entrepreneurs are expected to file, pay, and prove, then every operator, from the corner mini market to the big chain, should live under the same light. If every register can be turned off, every drawer hidden, and every sale left unrecorded, then the honest will always feel like fools, and the system will never balance.

In the end, this is not just a supermarket story. This is a public money story. Every unrecorded purchase is one less guilder available for roads that do not flood, clinics that do not turn patients away, schools that do not crumble, and garbage that does not pile up. Every time cash disappears into an uncounted drawer, the rest of the island is forced to make up the difference through higher burdens, delayed projects, or more borrowing. People already feel it in grocery prices, in waiting lists, and in the daily sense that the country is working hard but standing still.

The scale of what goes uncounted does not need to be guessed. These are illustrative numbers, not audited totals, but they show the order of magnitude at stake. Imagine the 43 mini supermarkets in this survey each turning over about XCG 500,000 a year, a modest figure for shops that are open daily. That alone would mean roughly XCG 21.5 million in annual sales. If only 30 percent of that slipped past the books in a cash-heavy, low-receipt environment, you are already talking about around XCG 6.5 million from just these 43 stores that may be only partly reflected in tax declarations.

A government cannot tax what it cannot see. When millions in economic activity may be effectively dimmed or blurred in the records, the burden of funding public services falls harder on those who live fully in the light: wage earners whose income is automatically reported, compliant businesses whose sales are tracked, and consumers who pay tax on every documented transaction. The shadow economy does not reduce the tax burden, it simply shifts more of it to people who have no choice but to be counted.

Mini supermarkets have already changed how St. Maarten shops. The real question is whether they will also change how St. Maarten counts, or whether the island will continue to confuse a busy checkout with a healthy economy.

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