That St. Maarten was promised a positive advice by the Dutch Ministry of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations BZK for its request to again deviate from the balanced budget rule due to COVID-19 is reassuring. The earlier postponement of this Friday’s Kingdom Council of Ministers RMR meeting in The Hague had raised some concern about undesirable further delay.
Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs broke the news in Parliament after her virtual meeting with recently-appointed Dutch State Secretary of Kingdom Relations and Digitisation Alexandra van Huffelen. Questions had been raised in Philipsburg whether debating and adopting the 2022 budget made sense, because without the deficit exemption Governor Eugene Holiday would not be able to sign it into law.
Once the RMR gives its blessings on February 4 as planned, the new budget can be quickly enacted and go into force, rather than having to govern based on last year’s version. Implementing a so-called “country package” of restructuring measures as condition for ongoing liquidity support from the Netherlands partly depends on that too.
St. Maarten did not request any soft loan for the first quarter but will need such to cover expected financial shortages during the following months. This also means related agreements already made must be honoured, unless renegotiated.
In addition, the Caribbean Body for Reform and Development COHO to supervise execution of the measures is still on the table, even though its predecessor the Temporary Work Organisation (TWO) has continued the necessary preparations. While there thus remains work to do in that sense, completing the budgetary process may certainly be considered an important step.
