What was becoming increasingly obvious now appears unavoidable. St. Maarten faces an instruction to bring its 2015 budget in line with requirements of the Kingdom Financial Supervision Law (see related article).
Just last Wednesday Prime Minister Marcel Gumbs had stated that draft amendments were at Parliament to increase the budget by 15 million guilders and shift some allocations, based on increased income projections and other complementing factors. However, that was evidently not enough to convince the Committee for Financial Supervision CFT, which has insisted that revenues were over-budgeted by NAf. 19 million. Finance Minister Martin Hassink reportedly was told so in no uncertain terms during recent talks in The Hague.
In his opinion and that of colleagues in the Gumbs cabinet, the country was not given enough leeway to reach the targets set and cooperation from the Netherlands to improve matters also is lacking. Be that as it may, the Government in Philipsburg will have to come up with 60 million guilders to compensate for past deficits and pay off the arrears to the General Pension Fund APS and Social Health Insurance SZV totalling some NAf. 189 million in the next three years.
Another intended measure to increase the pensionable age from 60 to 62 probably cannot be met until the end of the year and thus won’t have any impact in 2015. While the Finance Minister clearly is not to be envied, he will have little choice but to obey, whereby hiring Dutch personnel for the Tax Department to increase fiscal compliance hopefully can assist.
Moreover, the committee that evaluated the Financial Supervision Law as agreed five years after it was introduced per 10-10-10 came to the conclusion that it’s better to keep such in place for now, because both Curaçao and St. Maarten so far have not shown they are able to guarantee a sound budget and proper management of public finances on their own. As the Kingdom Council is likely to follow this advice, it seems Hassink and possibly also his successors will have to contend with CFT for quite a while longer.
Like it or not, that is something many actually may find reassuring in light of previous experience with Antillean politicians.
