Ministries Worked Day and Night to Present Amendments for a Balanced Budget
On the heels of Parliament adopting the amendments to the 2013 Budget late Thursday night, the Prime Minister of St. Maarten the Honorable Sarah Wescot-Williams on Friday updated the community and expressed thanks to Parliament on the way forward with regards to the approval of the 2013 Budget.
The approval by Parliament will allow Minister of Finance the Honorable Martin Hassink to respond to the advice by the CFT on the deficit of the Previous Draft Budget approved by the former NA-led coalition in Parliament in April.
The Prime Minister started by thanking both the Chairlady and Members of Parliament for seeing the urgency in getting the amended 2013 Budget Approved; "I need to thank the Chairlady of Parliament and the Members of Parliament for, notwithstanding the sometimes heated and oftentimes longwinded debates, giving the urgency of the Budget situation the deserved attention and to have within a short period of time both the Central Committee and Public Meeting which saw the approval to the amendments of the Budget," stated the Prime Minister.
The PM went on to clarify various items with regards to some comments which were made by Parliamentarians of the opposition, including suggestions that she did not sign off on the previous Draft Budget, which is in fact the task of His Excellency the Governor; "A Member of Parliament from the opposition has stated that the reason why the Budget was not passed was because the Prime Minister did not sign off on it, which is quite an unfortunate statement. The MP should have his facts straight when informing the public he represents considering that as a National Ordinance the budget has to be signed off by the Governor. When Minister Hassink came in to office it was in fact the Governor who asked the Minister the day after he took office to make the 2013 Budget his top priority. Every day and every night Minister Hassink and his Ministry as well as all of the other Ministers were coming up with a feasible amended Budget 2013. The good thing is that the Government overall was very conscientious in its spending pattern despite us having to do our mandate to do the people’s work. Moving forward now that we have an approved 2013 Budget by Parliament, the Budget will go to the Governor who will sign off on it and it then will be sent to the Council of Ministers for Co-signing. The Budget will subsequently go to the Ombudsman and the CFT for their review," concluded the Prime Minister.