Finance-commissioner: Risks mapped

January 15, 2009 6:27 AM

The Governing Body has tried to map as many financial risks for the island as possible with the budget of the island territory of Curacao, says Commissioner Mike Willem (PAR) in a reaction on reports in the local media that the College financial supervision (Cft) is worried about the financial risks and that the budget won’t get a positive advice.

The Extra reports that the Cft is concerned about, are expenses of among others the Scholarship Foundation of Curacao (SSC) and ambulance foundation Cems.  Willem says in a reaction that he can name a number of other risks that the island is coping with.  “These risks are the consequence of decisions from the past.  Decisions were made without taking into account the consequences for the budget.  Cems and Feffik are some examples.  When we were preparing the budget, we did our best to map all these risks as much as possible.  Thus these were considered in the budget.”

Approval of the island budget is necessary to qualify for the debt restructuring by the Netherlands.  The budget must meet a series of set standards, in which most important is that the sum of incomes and expenses must balance.  The budget shows a deficit of 15 million guilders at this moment, but there is a surplus of 700.000 guilders on the regular service.  The BC has meanwhile announced a budget adjustment.  This supplementary budget assumes extra expenses of 10.7 million guilders that are counterbalanced in a budget neutral manner, causing the deficit to remain 15 million guilders.  It is the budget that was submitted to Cft a few weeks ago.

Commissioner Willem also emphasizes that representatives of the BC and the Cft has been constantly talking, and the risks mentioned earlier came up for discussion.  He is not pleased the above was published before the Cft made his advice public.  Cft-spokesperson Jefka Alberto says in a reaction that the Cft won’t give reactions, as long as the college is still talking with the parties in question.  According to Alberto, the Cft will this week go public with an advice on the budget of Curacao.

(Source: National newspaper Amigoe)

13 January, 2009