Unbiased look at the Sint Maarten Elections
Parliament will debate the draft 2015 budget today in an effort to meet the end-of-January deadline set by the Kingdom Council of Ministers. The total amount is 445 million guilders, but the Committee for Financial Supervision CFT still wants this reduced to 426 million due to what it considers realistic income projections based on collections in 2014.
Finance Minister Martin Hassink has maintained up to now that further cuts are hardly possible because it's already a "skeleton budget." He instead wanted to try to convince CFT that the current, higher revenue estimates are legitimate and supported by, for example, findings of the Central Bank.
In that light the recent suggestion of UP leader Theo Heyliger that government should demand that all its companies that are able to pay concession fees do so begs the question whether that's how the 19-million-guilder shortfall, according to CFT, will be covered. His remarks led to a quick reaction by DP leader Sarah Wescot-Williams, questioning whether the "formateur" of the current coalition supporting the Gumbs cabinet didn't know what was in the budget sent to Governor Eugene Holiday.
She also referred to "repeated calls" by Hassink for a dividend policy to "level the playing field for all public companies," the lack of which was mentioned by CFT as well.
Mind you, it wouldn't be the first time government-owned entities such as GEBE are asked to "fill a gap" in the budget at the last moment. However, such ad-hoc solutions are obviously far from desirable and indeed should be replaced by a more comprehensive and structural approach, allowing for proper financial planning and management.
