We signed an agreement approving the General Kingdom Measures, we agreed to the establishing of the Committee for Financial Supervision (CFT). We signed an agreement that our Budgets would be balanced. Why did we sign them one would say? The answer is quite simple no agreement no country.
When the former National Alliance led government was in office and even prior to this sitting in the minority benches we had maintained first of all that the Budgets over the last 10 years were never balanced. We had also maintained that they were not realistic. The General Auditing Chamber of the then Netherlands Antilles never approved any of the Budgets over the same period. They made it abundantly clear that the documentation were of such a nature that it could not be approved. Former commissioner of Finance Xavier Blackman had argued and fought tooth and nail to include the monies that would come from country Netherlands Antilles to St. Maarten in the 2010 Budget. But this was denied by the CFT although the 2010 Budget of the Central Government was approved for the entire year and now we have to amend the same 2010 budget to accommodate these funds. We are now facing a budget deficit of Naf.130 million. The skeletons are coming out of the closet. I hope that seeing we have a General Auditing Chamber that the decisions taken by government with financial consequences are sent to them. What I am curious to know is if the external accountancy firm to study government’s existing policies and laws has already been selected. Some three weeks have already passed. Internally it should not be a problem identifying the deficit since the Minister of Finance has been working as head of the Finance Department for some 10 years. As I said before Government can begin by identifying the deficit. When and where did it start, what was the cause and is there a paper trail? Another aspect that must be looked into is how much funds if any has been deposited by the Netherlands for St. Maarten in an account of the Central Bank and what effect would this have on the deficit? I understood that these funds cannot be accessed unless St. Maarten presents approved accounts or financial statements. The Skeletons are coming out of the closet.