Financial restructuring of Land has started

February 10, 2009 4:00 AM

The Dutch State Secretary Ank Bijleveld-Schouten (Kingdom Relations, CDA) has ordered the start of the Antillean financial restructuring scheme. The ministry of Homeland Affairs and Kingdom Relations has meanwhile ordered to deposit 98.4 million guilders in an account of the Bank of the Netherlands Antilles (BNA).

This amount regards the debt restructuring for the months January and February 2009. The amount for March and April will be deposited before the end of the month. The total amount for January till April 2009 is almost 128 million Antillean guilders (about 55 million euro) in payments and 19 million guilders (about 10 million euro) in interest payments.

Bijleveld’s green light follows the positive advice of the College financial supervision (Cft) on the 2009 budget of the Land Netherlands Antilles and the approved audit certificate for the debtor’s services of the Land in the period January till April 2009.
Bijleveld congratulated Finance-minister Ersilia de Lannooy (PNP) in a letter dated February 5 for having complied with the conditions for the Land Netherlands Antilles’ debt restructuring. “I want to congratulate you with the achieved result”, said Bijleveld.
The debt restructuring relates to 100 percent of the payments and 70 percent of the interest payments of the Land. Bijleveld says that with the transfers, the Netherlands has started to carry out the arrangements that the new entities get a sound starting position. Contrary to the Land, the island territory of Curacao didn’t get a positive advice from the Cft. The BC has received two extra weeks to draw up a thorough approach plan to put the shortcomings right.

The Netherlands has reserved a total amount of approximately 1.6 milliard euro for the debt restructuring, which consists of two components. Approximately 240 million euro is allocated for the payments arrears. The rest of the money is going to be used for the debt restructuring including interest. An amount of 27 million euro was already deposited in a BNA-account for the BES-islands in November of 2007 for the settlement of the payments arrears. The Netherlands will only start with the restructuring of the interest payments after January – April 2009, when she has received an audit certificate for this information. Expectations are that this will happen soon.

(Source: National newspaper Amigoe)

9 February, 2009