�CFT advises Kingdom Council�
WILLEMSTAD--The Committee for Financial Supervision CFT has advised the Kingdom Council of Ministers to give St. Maarten instructions on how to fix its budget crisis immediately, because the island still does not have a balanced budget that complies with the Kingdom Act on Financial Supervision for Cura�ao and St. Maarten.
CFT made its recommendation, based on Article 14, Paragraph 2 of the Kingdom Act, to the Kingdom Council on Thursday, hours ahead of the Council's meeting in The Hague today, Friday.
The CFT board said in a press release Thursday that considering the situation, no other possibility remained based on the Kingdom Act than to advise the Kingdom Council of Ministers to give St. Maarten an instruction. It will be up to the Kingdom Council of Ministers to decide on the steps to be followed to come to a solution concerning the problems surrounding the draft budget 2011 for St. Maarten, the CFT said.
The CFT board said it had tried to reach joint agreements with St. Maarten to come to a solution, but "St. Maarten has reneged on agreements made previously and an attempt at the beginning of this week to have a joint discussion failed."
That attempt was a video conference meeting of the CFT board, Prime Minister Sarah Wescot-Williams and Finance Minister Hiro Shigemoto on Monday that did not go ahead because neither minister showed up. Currently in Cura�ao, Wescot-Williams had said on Wednesday that neither she nor Shigemoto had ever confirmed attendance at the meeting and that government was working out its budget issues this week.
Parliament passed the budget in its present form in December 2010, but it was rejected as unbalanced by the CFT several weeks ago, based on several reasons, including a dispute about the estimated economic growth rate and the budget ceiling.
Dealing with budget ceiling, the Prime Minister had stated in a letter to CFT on March 11 that the Council of Ministers would maintain and not lower the NAf. 461 million total expenditures. This amount includes more than NAf. 25 million for projects related to the Plans of Approach, NAf. 15 million for pension back-service related to the indexation of past years' salaries and other incidental expenditure.
Lowering the budget ceiling to NAf. 416 million as suggested by CFT is "not deemed responsible," said the Prime Minister, as this would affect government in the execution of its tasks. The NAf. 461 million is sufficient, as government has NAf. 468 million in available means: NAf. 416 from tax income, NAf. 20 million in advances on Antillean assets and NAf. 32 in reserves.
Democratic Party (DP) Parliamentarian and former Finance Commissioner Roy Marlin told The Daily Herald on learning about the CFT advice it was his personal opinion that the CFT "seems to have a predetermined agenda that's against St. Maarten."
He added that while CFT had been telling the island about rules, the advisory body had not been "carrying out its responsibilities properly, because it had failed to inform Parliament about its views and issues with the 2011 budget."
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