~ But country in financial crisis ~
PHILIPSBURG--Finance Minister Richard Gibson Sr. on Wednesday dismissed as untrue rumours circulating that he planned to slash the vacation allowance of civil servants in the country.
Gibson said the rumours were “the furthest thing from my mind” and needed to be “put to rest.” Gibson said the talk was just a rumour and nothing else. However, he said the country was in a “formidable” financial crisis, which he said was mounting and was “very challenging.”
In painting a picture of the crisis, Gibson said St. Maarten had never had a balanced budget since it assumed its status as Country within the Dutch Kingdom on October 10, 2010. In addition, deficits have been built up over the past five years amounting to some NAf. 60 million in 2015, which St. Maarten has three years to settle. This means St. Maarten has to dedicate NAf. 20 million from its budget every year to compensate for part of the debt.
Another component, he noted, is that from around September 2016 St. Maarten will have to start repaying its share of the debt relief of the former Netherlands Antilles received from the Netherlands for 10/10/10. The debt relief ran into the millions and St. Maarten’s share is about 27 per cent. This also has to be deducted from the budget.
Gibson also alluded to the unpaid Social and Health Insurance SZV premiums over the past five years amounting to around NAf. 70 million and the unpaid pension fund premiums amounting to some NAf. 80 million. This all amounts to a debt of about NAf. 200 million that has to be settled in the annual budget. He said he had been in office only two weeks and suspected that this might be just “the tip of the iceberg.”
Gibson said that while some persons might think he had come into office as “a hatchet man” and even were ascribing cuts that he had not pondered, the crisis was not about cuts, but about “how are we going to survive and recognise that there is a crisis and we cannot continue as if it’s business as usual to be able to have a chance in the next couple of years.
“No one is popular by saying no and by saying ‘I can’t,’ but this is not a popularity contest. We are dealing with financial survival and how we will keep our house in order.”
