It turns out the Committee for Financial Supervision CFT is critical of the 2018 budget because it lacks information to back up the figures (see related story). This does not come as a complete surprise considering the difficult circumstances under which the annual policy document was prepared.
Finance Minister Michael Ferrier himself had told Parliament the budget was “not a pretty picture,” although that referred more to the bottom line than the content. The fact is that projections logically involved an unusual amount of guesswork due to a high degree of uncertainty over the precise impact of record-strength Hurricane Irma on both expenses and revenues.
One of the complaints is missing data on government-owned companies and the risk they represent. This is a longstanding and thorny issue especially now because of legal and other problems facing several of these entities, but one that should nevertheless be resolved.
Due to its current socio-economic situation St. Maarten is being allowed to have a deficit this year. However, liquidity support from the Netherlands as provided for 2017 must obviously be requested again to cover whatever gap is left at the end, for which the assistance of CFT is required.
Cost-cutting measures government announced without much specification plus steps to increase income need to be executed quickly, also because six months of the present year have almost passed. A monthly budget realisation report is to be submitted.
To put it briefly: a lot of work clearly remains to be done in this area, so prospective future Finance Minister Perry Geerlings will have to grab that baton and hit the ground running.
