An urgent meeting of Parliament regarding an update on the technical issues delaying the ratification and publication of the 2025 National Budget has been called for today, Thursday. The “urgency” may still apply, but a month has passed since it was originally scheduled for April 9.
While Minister of Finance Marinka Gumbs is expected to appear in the plenary session, Prime Minister Luc Mercelina (General Affairs) also mentioned the topic in Wednesday’s weekly live press briefing. He reminded everyone that his government after taking office still had to complete the final version of the 2024 budget and did so last December, while this year’s version was passed by the legislature in January.
However, they ran into what the prime minister called “technical and legal” problems. These would be resolved by the end of May, he assured.
That’s none too soon, almost halfway into the year the budget is supposed to cover. In the meantime, expenditures can formally only take place based on the 2024 version, rendering new policy decisions and initiatives difficult to implement at best.
To be fair, adopting budgets on time has been more the exception than the rule since St. Maarten became an autonomous country in the Dutch Kingdom per 10-10-10. Worse, there are usually revisions well into the budgetary year, sometimes even at the end of December.
Involvement of the Committee for Financial Supervision (CFT) puts and additional burden on the process. Accommodating last-minute amendments from elected representatives that have implications for the figures doesn’t make things any easier.
Although today’s meeting was requested by all six opposition members, their nine colleagues of the coalition parties will no doubt have some questions and remarks of their own. Important now is to realise a valid quality budget sooner rather than later.
