PM: "The representative of our financial systems is no small issue"
The Prime Minister of St. Maarten the Honorable Sarah Wescot-Williams clarified issues related to the Central Bank of Curacao and St. Maarten during a radio interview she gave last Friday.
The Prime Minister explained the background and current developments as it relates to the Central Bank: "During the past decade I spent most of my waking time on the matter of constitutional reform on St. Maarten until we got our status in 2010 and within this context I was part of the discussions and the agreements regarding the Central Bank for Curacao and St. Maarten. When St. Maarten was working out becoming a country we were getting a lot of resistance because we have chose, as a people, for a new status; we were knocking on the door of the Kingdom saying that we wanted change and we received much negativity. Similarly we wanted to have our own Central Bank but it was discussed to have a joint monetary union between Curacao and St. Maarten which eventually became a decision. On paper that seemed the right way to go because St. Maarten fought hard and long to get an equal position in the management of the bank and issues regarding the shareholdership within the institution; St. Maarten specifically demanded that we get equality.
"However working that out became almost an impossibility to get to that structure; the fights have been many in terms of appointing persons because in terms of appointing members from St. Maarten both shareholders need to appoint the equal amount of candidates. Both countries have also put forward one or more candidates for the Chairperson of the board of the Central Bank. That became very difficult and eventually the court appointed someone as Chairperson. Especially in Curaçao politics were fierce with regards to the Central Bank and the St. Maarten Board could not have meetings with the Curacao members of the Board. The General Audit Chamber of Curacao was asked to do an analysis of the Central Bank on Curacao and one of the things that report alleges was that it did not get the necessary cooperation. There was a third report done with a third party but that has not been released yet. Meanwhile there has been a continuous discussion and a back and forth on many things. Given all of that we still do not seem to be able to get out of the situation. The country of St. Maarten needs to make decision regarding if we want to continue with the monetary union and the steps to ensure that this union works. Taking all of this into account I have come to the conclusion that our economy is very resilient because anywhere else if you have a debacle surrounding an institution like your Central Bank people would not have continued to invest in in our country.
However, the agreement still remains that we will have a well-functioning branch of the Central Bank doing the things that they are called to do which includes an upgrade of the current Bank Building on St. Maarten so that we can get familiar with the things that need to get done. This has not happened because of the situation I have discussed earlier. Because of the ongoing debacles with the Central Bank the Ministers of Finance met on Curacao to decide where we are going with the bank. In the meantime Minister Hassink is in the process of responding to the findings of those reports. No agreements were made and no reports were made to report to the Council of Ministers. I expect that the Council of Ministers will get a briefing on Tuesday. The UP leader is correct in his assessment that a decision regarding the Central Bank has to also be that of Parliament as this has a far reaching impact on the Country of St. Maarten. The fact is that the feeling that seems to have been created that a decision has been made by the Minister of Finance regarding the Central bank has not been made by the Government of St. Maarten. Any decisions would have to be carefully studied and deliberated in Parliament as well. The representative of our financial systems is no small issue," emphasized Prime Minister Wescot-Williams.