WILLEMSTAD - Prime Minister Eugene Rhuggenaath of Curaçao and Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands signed a cooperation agreement 'Growth Strategy Curaçao' on Monday 21 January 2019. This agreement aims to modernize the cooperative relationship between the countries. It is a new impulse in the relationship between the two countries in the Kingdom, aimed at broad cooperation, with a view to sustainable improvements in Curaçao.

Curaçao has developed an integral, coherent plan, called 'Growth Strategy Curaçao Integral and Together', to promote economic growth, financial management and the government organization of Curaçao. The Netherlands was asked to cooperate in the implementation of this plan.

For Curaçao, the signing of the covenant means an extra boost and support to meet the complex and coherent challenges facing the government. It offers more possibilities to implement improvements for the economy, financial management and government organization in a sustainable way, and not only because of the short-term problems with the budget, as identified by, among others, the Financial Supervision Board (CFT). Although the Curaçao government continues to see the budgetary challenges as a top priority in the short term, the government feels that the chances of improving the underlying causes are structurally improved by the cooperation opportunities offered by the covenant. The government, therefore, focuses on both trajectories.

The Netherlands greatly appreciates the Growth Strategy and sees the importance of cooperation in the development and implementation of the plan. Both parties have therefore agreed that they will record the cooperation in a covenant.