Proposal for an amended balanced Budget is now with the Council of Advise and with the CFT"
The Prime Minister of St. Maarten the Honorable Sarah Wescot-Williams gave an update on the Budget Process recently. The Prime Minister explained that the Minister of Finance needed to make some quick and realistic adjustments to the Budget 2013: "The issue that some persons do not understand is that the Budget was balanced by Parliament. However the CFT does not only gives opinion on the drafting of the Budget but also after Parliament adopts the Budget the CFT needs to take a look at it again. The CFT also needs to give a check on that Budget approved by Parliament and some of the items mentioned in the Budget needed to be legislated and as time passed the CFT started to wonder about the feasibility of that item because no attempts have been made to legislate that until then.
"We came up with a proposal for amendments that would come to a realistically lowered and balanced Budget. The proposal for an amended balanced Budget is now with the Council of Advise and with the CFT and we hope to within short present this to Parliament.
The Prime Minister stated that since before 101010 St. Maarten was on one hand fortunate because it did not have significant amount of employees on the payroll of Government which was the case on Curacao. "We did not have the excesses but at the same time we needed to create new services and departments and expand others. There are critical departments that are critically understaffed. Within the context of a reduced Budget and considering how we need to provide these services we are exploring how to best address these issue," concluded the Prime Minister.