In a letter to Parliament dated January 22, the Committee for Financial Supervision pointed out that St. Maarten so far failed to submit an established 2024 budget for advice as legally required by December 15. In fact, this has been the case annually since attaining country status per 10-10-10.
That’s 13 years in a row and also has to do with the lack of political stability after the dualistic system of government accompanying this new constitutional status was implemented. Voters ended up going to the polls on average every two instead of four years.
Ironically, the outgoing National Alliance (NA)/United People’s (UP) party government was the first to complete its full term, although two independent parliamentarians were needed to ensure majority legislative support during the last part. It seems unlikely that coalition will still push to adopt the draft budget, considering the recent election result and subsequent agreement signed between United Resilient St. Maarten Movement (URSM), Democratic Party (DP), Party for Progress (PFP) and Nation Opportunity Wealth (NOW).
In that case, the next legislature taking office on February 10 must pass the budget and CFT has now urged to do so by March 31. This means the incoming coalition will have little space for significant changes to the current version prepared by the Jacobs II Cabinet.
Amendments remain possible later and have become increasingly customary even well into the fiscal year. However, that is hardly a desirable situation.
The current cycle of holding elections in January is far from ideal in a budgetary sense. Better would be for any new government to take office during the summer and then focus on presenting its own budget for the following year to Parliament at the start of September, as the Constitution prescribes.
To be sure, all this should in no way be interpreted as a call for early elections in the near future.
