THE HAGUE--St. Maarten will shortly receive NAf. 19.3 million from the Netherlands for the payroll support programme for the month June, Dutch State Secretary of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations Raymond Knops announced today, Tuesday.
Knops confirmed in a letter to the Dutch Parliament that he had decided to go over to the issuing of the second partial payment with regard to the second tranche liquidity support for an amount of NAf. 19.3 million to help St. Maarten in covering the June business payroll support programme.
The amount, which is being paid based on the positive advice of the Committee for Financial Supervision CFT, is part of the total interest-free loan for the second tranche of NAf. 43.3 million or 21.65 million euro.
The first partial payment of the second tranche amounted to NAf. 24 million. It was agreed in May that the second tranche for Country St. Maarten would, conform the conditions, be paid in two parts.
The first part was immediately issued as a loan, while the funding of the second part, specifically for the payroll support programme, would only be transferred after St. Maarten had complied with two specific conditions regarding this programme, which is part of the St. Maarten Stimulus Plan (SSRP).
The St. Maarten government had to ensure a 20 per cent contribution of the employees of the companies that receive payroll support and make an adaptation to the payroll support subsidy model whereby the percentage of receivable subsidy matches the company’s turn-over loss percentage to avoid discrepancies.
The CFT advised the state secretary on July 21 that St. Maarten had retroactively per June 1 given adequate content to the condition for the employees’ contribution and the one-on-one percentage match with the turn-over loss in the payroll support programme for entrepreneurs.
Knops clarified that St. Maarten receives liquidity support for the period in which the country complies with the conditions. The payroll support regulation for the month June went into effect on July 16, 2020 retroactively until June 1, 2020. As such, the Dutch liquidity support amounts to NAf. 19.3 million, covering the period May 15 up to and including June.
The third tranche Dutch liquidity support is still being negotiated between The Hague and the individual Dutch Caribbean countries. The Dutch government has tied many conditions, including the establishing of a Caribbean Reform Entity and far-reaching austerity measures.
