PHILIPSBURG:— Minister of Finance Ardwell Irion announced on Wednesday that the government of St. Maarten submitted a request with the Central Bank to float a bond in order to get out of its financial crisis. The Minister further explained that the government of St. Maarten continues with its efforts to cut costs and increase its revenues. Irion said that while many felt that government should have regulated its phone and gas policies earlier, he said he is not responsible for what was done and not done in the past, however, he believes in execution and has implemented new measures regarding gas bonds for government workers as well as the phone plans which will save government millions in the future.
Minister Irion also explained that government is busy collecting money that is owed to the government by persons that are not paying the lease for domain lands while the government is also speeding up the process for building permits and licenses. The Minister explained that these measures will put more money into government coffers. Irion said St. Maarten has about NAF 60M in its coffers, he did say that he was also misquoted when he said that government will run out of liquidity by October 2020. On Wednesday the Minister of Finance said that St. Maarten does have some money that will take them up to the end of 2020.
Besides the cost-cutting measures and collection, the Minister of Finance said that the discussions with CFT continue as the government of St. Maarten seeks to get continued funding from the Dutch for the payroll and income support. Irion said only this week the CFT made it clear that they are not the decision-makers but instead they are advisors to the Dutch government. Irion said that the discussions that have been ongoing since March 2020 is getting better now. He also mentioned that the Prime Minister did send more documents to the Dutch Government hoping to strengthen St. Maarten’s position.
