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Published On: Wed, Dec 19th, 2018

Central Bank of Curacao and St. Maarten publishes Financial Statements for 2017

cbcs-headquarters-in-st-maarten

PHILIPSBURG/WILLEMSTAD — Over a week ago, the Central Bank of Curacao and St. Maarten published its financial statements for 2017. In a press release the Bank announced that the 2017 financial statements of the Centrale Bank van Curaçao en Sint Maarten (CBCS) had recently been adopted by the meeting of Entitled Asset holders. A condensed version of these financial statements had been published on the CBCS website.

The Bank stated in its release that the increase of the total balance of 2017 compared to the total balance of 2016 was especially related to the increase of the market price of gold.

The increase of the net result of 2017 compared to the net result of 2016 is attributable to, among others, the increase of the interest rate on the international market (which contributed to the increase of the interest income) and the relative increase of the supervision fees (relative because it relates to a correction of the supervision fees in 2016 for supervision fees that the Bank probably will not be able to collect, which correction has decreased the supervision fees of 2016). The increase of the income has partially been absorbed by the increase of the depreciation expenses (amongst other issuance costs of banknotes, software applications that have been installed, licenses for software applications that have been acquired and extra depreciation on bank premises in order to align the value hereof with the appreciated value) and increase of the general operating expenses (especially related to personnel costs charged to special attention institutions, which has decreased the expenses of 2016).

Two parts of the latter paragraph caught our attention.

The first regards the statement “..a correction of the supervision fees in 2016 for supervision fees that the Bank probably will not be able to collect, which correction has decreased the supervision fees of 2016..”

Why would the Bank not be able to collect supervision fees of 2016?

What reasons would there by for not being able to collect supervision fees?

We posed these questions to the Bank.

The answer we received was: “The correction of the supervision fees in 2016 is based on the ongoing discussions with the supervised institutions on the supervision fee, whereby the Bank – based on preliminary agreements – has made the indicated correction.”

So basically this means that the supervised institutions can determine the supervision fee they have to pay.

This brings the popular saying to mind: You don’t get what you deserve, you get what you negotiate.

Good to know for future reference.

Oh, and the second part? We leave that for the financial geeks to figure out. Download the complete PDF file of the 2017 financial statements here.