Willemstad – Recently several newspapers in St. Maarten wrote that the most recent semiannual report of the Board of financial supervision (College financieel toezicht Curaçao en Sint Maarten – Cft), offers a misinterpretation of facts. The Board considers it of importance to set the record straight by means of this press release.
Twice a year the Board of financial supervision submits a written report of its activities to the Kingdom Council of Ministers. This report, the so called semiannual report, is forwarded to the governments and parliaments of the respective countries.
On March 28th Sint Maarten newspapers reported that Cft erroneously stating that no financial statement were drafted by the government of Sint Maarten. The Board informs however on page 15 of the semiannual report, that it on October 31st it received the draft financial statements for the extended year 2010/2011; thus the draft financial statements over the period starting on October 10th 2010 until December 31st 2011. On the same page it is mentioned that the SOAB and the General Audit Chamber would report about these draft financial statements not earlier than 2013. Up until now this reaction has not been received. It is furthermore stated on page 22 that the financial statements are only available in draft and have not yet been adopted by the Parliament.
On December 7th, the General Audit Chamber submitted its report on the financial statements of the former island territory of Sint Maarten to Parliament. This concerns thus financial statements over the period up to October 10th 2010 and not over the period after October 10th 2010. This report was shown to the media during a press conference of the Minister of Finance and was also published on the website of the General Audit Chamber. The financial statements from October 10th 2010 to December 31th, 2011 have not been submitted to the General Audit Chamber as yet.
For the sake of completeness, the Board stated in its press release of March 25th, that ‘up till now none of the two countries have an audited annual report to present to Parliament to account for the use of tax money since October 10th, 2010.’ This statement is correct. No audited financial statement was presented to the parliament of the period since October 10th 2010. For the Board of financial supervision it is of great value that financial statements are timely drawn up and that accountability if given to Parliament, reason why this subject was explicitly brought forward in the semiannual report.
The Cft cannot but conclude that the facts given in the semiannual report are correct. To avoid errors, it is a good practice that the Cft confers with the Ministry of Finance before it submits its semiannual report to the Kingdom Council of Ministers. The Ministry however did not detect any factual inaccuracies during the two weeks that it had, to provide comments on the draft semiannual report.