PHILIPSBURG--Research and consultation on the possibility of dollarisation for St. Maarten instead of the planned Caribbean Guilder in 2012 is based on establishing what is best for the island, said Prime Minister Sarah Wescot-Williams on Wednesday.

The Council of Ministers has had talks about dollarisation with Central Bank Head Emsley Tromp and the St. Maarten Bankers Association in the past week.

Asked in the weekly Council of Ministers press conference about the view of government on dollarisation, Wescot-Williams said the coalition partners' view about moving to the use of the US dollar as official tender still stood, but no firm decision would be made without the use of as many factors as possible.

Arriving at the decision whether or not to dollarise is "not easy," she said, adding that every time an option was clear, more questions and views were raised that needed to be taken into consideration.

The prime minister noted that it was not possible to bring everything into the equation to make a decision on whether to keep the planned joint currency with Curaçao or move to the dollar.