Budgetary Woes plague St. Maarten…
While Curacao have already presented balance budgets with surplus for 2023 & 2024
St Maarten has fallen behind in fulfilling its lawful obligation to have a budget approved by Parliament before December 15th each year. As a consequence The Kingdom Council of Ministers was forced to take action.
At the end of last month (January) 2023, the Kingdom Council of Ministers (RMR) in The Hague, issued an instruction to St. Maarten to have an approved budget for 2023 before March 31st 2023. This decision was taken after St. Maarten failed to comply with its Budgetary norms of having their 2023 Budget approved by Parliament on or before December 15th 2022.
December 15th of each year is the deadline in the Kingdom Law on Financial Supervision the (RFT), to have an approved Budget for the following year. The Kingdom Council of Ministers, through the State Secretary for Kingdom Relations and Digitisation Ms Alexandra van Huffelen, has requested St. Maarten at all cost to come with an approved budget before March 31st, 2023. The second chamber in the Dutch Parliament has been duly inform of the decision taken by the (RMR).
In her written update to the Parliament, Van Huffelen also stated that St. Maarten has been urged to come up with a plan to have a process in place to make sure they have a 2024 Budget approved in a timely manner as stipulated by law. St. Maarten she says, can also make use of the recommendations from the audit of the Budget process.
Curacao on the other hand, have already presented Balance budgets for 2023 and 2024 and have projected Budgets in place for 2025 and 2026. The CFT in their report on Curacao, had good remarks about Curacao, for achieving positive results with the project to increase tax compliance and to optimize tax administration. Curacao have also worked on reductions of Government expenditures and implemented strict budgetary policy that enabled them to switch to a budget surplus already in 2023. Meanwhile St. Maarten must push hard to meet the March 31st deadline to have a 2023 budget approved by Parliament.
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