LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

Spring is in the air – at least in Curaçao that means the winds are dying down, it’s raining less and the weather is getting hotter. It also signifies a time for spring cleaning, a time when we think about cleaning out the garage or adding a fresh coat of paint to the house. You can do a little spring cleaning in your business too. Besides going through that big stack of filing or cleaning out your desk, we can think about cleaning up the clutter in our business objectives and goals. This can include re-evaluating our new year resolutions – throwing out those that just didn’t go over well, re-vamping those that almost hit their target, but just need to be adjusted or even adding new ones as we realize what may have been missing.

In this issue, we have some articles that may help you re-evaluate the way you run your business and aid in your spring cleaning. Nowadays, many of us are selecting paperless options for our billing and banking statements and we are asking people to not print an email unless necessary. How about making your whole company paperless? Perhaps your new company is growing and you need an extra hand, but don’t have enough work to actually hire an employee. You can think about using a virtual assistant to help out only where you need it, freeing your time to focus on other things. You may want to give your employees a boost in productivity and morale – how about organizing team building activities?

We are also pleased to cover Curaçao’s first STEP conference. In a joint venture by CIFC, CIFA and the STEP branch of Curaçao, our island was host to the conference that had the objective to promote Curaçao as a midshore juristiction. In attendance were international speakers and guests, as well as our very own power players in business and the government. It was impossible to thoroughly cover the full two days in one article, so we included a brief overview of the event. I would like to extend a special thank you to the sponsors who supported the coverage of the conference in this edition.

The Chamber has also been quite busy since the beginning of the year, launching the new year with it’s annual Jaarrede, or annual address. You will find an overview in this issue. We also covered the COSME grant launch briefing and an export conference titled, “Key Steps to Successfully Enter Overseas Markets” with Toine Knipping as the keynote speaker. My final thought to leave you with as you go through your day: To grow your business to a different level, you have to bring in the best people – be a strategist, empower them and turn them loose. You will achieve much more than trying to do it all yourself.

Heather de Paulo
Chief Editor