It was coincidental that the column yesterday talked about the Aruba refinery, and its troubled history. That same day, another media outlet also devoted space for the trial and tribulations of RDA and its money-losing trajectory.
As a governmental entity, we must shamefully admit that all state-owned companies are money losing propositions. Business ventures cannot be trusted to the state, Arubus, Serlimar, Post Aruba, Lotto, RDA have all been scrutinized by the auditors and found lacking.
The auditors looked at RDA’s activities between 2017 and 2022, found its expenses soaring and its income diminishing.
As a recap: As Coastal Corporation ran into financial difficulties, it sold the refinery to Valero Corporation in 2004. Valero made the decision to shut down the refinery in 2012, after a few years of sub-par performance. Post closing, GOA continued to look for someone to restart the facility, it ultimately convinced PDVSA owned CITGO to take over in 2016. After a few years of studying potential restart options, CITGO decided not to proceed with those efforts and returned control back to GOA in late 2019. The agreement did not include any mention of unpaid bills and made no specific collection arrangement for the outstanding amounts, in the millions, which were deemed uncollectible.
There are two daughter companies under the umbrella of RDA, FMSA, Fuel Marketing & Supply Aruba which services the gas stations and the airport, and TdEA, Terminal di Energy Aruba. While FMSA is usually thought of as profitable, TdEA is always in the red.
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According to Tourism Analytics: Aruba received 122,573 stopover visitors in June 2024, 20.7% more than the 101,518 stopovers received in June 2023. |
| According to the Aruba Tourism Authority, Aruba received 122,573 stopover arrivals in June 2024, 20.7% more than the 101,518 stopover visitors it received in June 2023.
Compared with June 2023, stopover arrivals from the USA increased by 17.6%, growing from 80,892 arrivals in June 2023 to 95,135 arrivals in June 2024. Arrivals from the USA comprised 77.6% of all arrivals in June 2024 down from 79.7% in June 2023. Arrivals from Canada increased by 23.6%, growing from 2,005 visitors in June 2023 to 2,479 stopovers in June 2024. Arrivals from the Netherlands declined by 5.3%, falling from 2,405 stopovers in June 2023 to 2,278 in June of this year. Aruba received 11 cruise ship calls in June 2024 and a total of 43,031 cruise passengers, with the volume of cruise visitors up 46.0% from the 29,464 received in June 2023. The average number of passengers per call grew from 3,274 visitors in June 2023 to 3,912 cruise visitors in June 2024. In the first six months of 2024 Aruba saw a 19.0% increase in the number of stopover visitors, growing from 619,719 visitors in the first six months of 2023 to 737,691 visitors in the first six months of this year. The number of stopovers from the USA grew by 17.1% during the first six months, from 480,672 in the first six months of 2023 to 563,019 in the same six months of 2024. The share of stopovers from the USA fell from 77.6% in the first six months of 2023 to 76.3% in the same six months of 2024. The number of visitors staying in hotels grew by 12.4% from 278,437 in the first six months of 2023 to 312,957 in the same six month of 2024 with the share of such visitors falling from 44.9% in 2023 to 42.4% in the same six months of 2024. This was because the number of visitors staying in “Other Accommodation,” primarily short term rental accommodation in private homes or apartments, grew by 37.5%, from 176,974 visitors in the first six months of 2023 to 243,401 in the same six months of 2024.with their share of all visitors growing from 28.6% in 2023 to 33.0% in the same six months of 2024. Aruba received 193 cruise ship calls in the first six months of 2024 with 543,214 cruise passengers compared with the 190 calls cruise ships made in the same six months of 2023 with 499,442 passengers. The average number of passengers per call grew by 7.1%, from 2,629 visitors in the first six months of 2023 to 2,815 visitors in the same six months of 2024. |
