Salaries for ministers unchanged in 2020 draft budget
PHILIPSBURG – The draft 2020 budget does not contain any indication that ministers and parliamentarians will take a ten percent salary cut. On the contrary, the listed salaries for all ministers – with the exception of Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs – are exactly the same as in 2019. The salary cut is a condition for receiving financial aid from the Netherlands.
Jacob’s annual salary in 2019 was 229,961 guilders; the budgeted salary for 2020 is 219,962 guilders, a decrease of 9,999 guilders (4.35 percent). The prime minister also takes a small cut in her vacation allowance (from 14,986 to 14,350 guilders – a decrease of 4.24 percent). Salary and vacation money combined, Jacobs will receive 10,635 guilders or 4.34 percent less.
However, the total personnel costs for the prime minister decrease by 14.6 percent. This is because the contribution to the general pension fund APS – close to 34,000 guilders – has been scrapped.
The salary for the other six ministers remains exactly what it was in 2019: 219,962 guilders plus 14,350 guilders vacation allowance for a grand total of 234,312 guilders ($130,900).
The numbers for the parliament tell a slightly different story. Salaries total 4,419,124 guilders (down 192,286 guilders or 4.17 percent) and vacation allowances drop by 22,911 to 266,015 guilders (minus 7.93 percent). By taking out the entire post “several compensations and allowances” for 189,566 guilders as well as the contribution to pension fund APS (42,214) plus a few other minor adjustments, total personnel costs for the parliament drop by 466,260 guilders from 5,768,567 in 2019 to 5,302,307 this year – a decrease of 8.08 percent.
On the other hand, the budget for travel and accommodation goes up by 32.2 percent to 500,000 guilders. All in all, the total cost for parliament drops by a mere 5.67 percent from 6,517,710 to 6,148,307 guilders (roughly $3.4 million).
One of the conditions for financial aid from the Netherlands is that parliamentarians and ministers cut their salaries by ten percent. It is unclear how the numbers in the draft budget will stand in the way of the arrival of desperately needed financial assistance from the Netherlands.
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