A bit late but still a good question. Why did St. Maarten never put money aside for the loans it received from the Netherlands back in 2010? Why indeed?
It is tempting to suspect that St. Maarten never intended to repay those loans. If that is true, it makes our country a highly unreliable kingdom partner.
Another possible explanation is that bookkeeping is not our country’s strongest point. Financial supervisor Cft has advised the government for years to improve its financial management. The most heard excuse for lack of progress: lack of capacity.
The last known number of civil servants in St. Maarten is 1,685. If we assume a population of 40,000, this means that there is a civil servant for every 24 inhabitants.
The Dutch city of Amersfoort has more than 140,000 inhabitants, yet the number of civil servants is just around 950, or one per 147 inhabitants. The argument against this: yeah, true, but Amersfoort does not have a port and it does not have an airport either.
While this is true, one may well wonder whether St, Maarten really needs 735 civil servants just because it has a port and an airport. This does not make a lot of sense. And then we are not even talking about the undeniable fact that Amersfoort is, in terms of population 3.5 times the size of St. Maarten.
While Amersfoort manages all of its affairs with just one civil servant per approximately 147 inhabitants, St. Maarten has one for every 24 citizens. This looks like serious overkill to me. If we had Amersfoort’s ratio of civil servants per inhabitant, there would only be around 272 civil servants on the government’s payroll.
From this perspective, claiming lack if capacity as excuse for a lot of things is pure nonsense.
This brings me back to the original question. Why did St. Maarten not make any reservations for the repayment of these loans? The thought has occurred to me that such reservations require unpopular decisions – and such decisions make voters run for the hills.
Therefore, politicians have little or no interest in decisions that could cost them their seat and that leave them without money for their pet projects because they don’t particularly like the idea of political suicide.
The question could also be raised whose responsibility it is to set money aside for the repayment of these loans. Is it the government? Is it the parliament?
I am thinking that the real culprit in this case are the successive parliaments. Our parliament controls the government – at least, that’s the idea. If the government does not include repayment-reservations in a budget, the parliament has the power to change that.
Sadly, for the past fifteen years the government and the parliament have been living in la-la land, ignoring the reality that loans have a particular characteristic: sooner or later you have to pay them back.
I wonder what will happen if state secretary Szabo refuses to refinance the outstanding loans. Even if he does agree to do this, it is a solution with consequences for future generations.
I know: St. Maarten cannot make these payments magically appear out of bloody nowhere. That is not going to happen.
But the least our decision makers could do is make a new beginning (sort of) by setting some money aside in the 2025 budget. If that does not happen, St. Maarten will go down in history as an autonomous entity that cannot be trusted.
By Hilbert Haar
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Related article:
Questions arise about St. Maarten’s handling of its Kingdom loans
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