Minister of Finance: “Doing nothing is not an option!”

WILLEMSTAD - Doing a recent parliamentary debate, the Minister of Finance, Kenneth Gijsbertha, announced a whole package of austerity measures that will be implanted starting July 1 of this year. The package of measures has been proposed by the Budget Review Committee and should raise 121 million guilders to close the gap of 127 million guilders.

The government had requested to be able to inform the parliament, given the efforts being made to answer the Financial Supervision Council (Cft) about how the 2019 budget will be corrected.

Part of the package is, according to the minister, the raising of the sales tax rates to 9 percent insofar as they now amount to 6 and 7 percent.

The existing exemptions will then be maintained. With a rough calculation, 162 million can be raised on an annual basis; around 81 million in six months. The Central Bank CBCS has been asked to estimate to what extent this is also realistic, given the expected effect of the rate increase on spending behavior.

All proposals, including raising excise duties on alcoholic beverages and tobacco products, as Aruba has done, but also raising the waste tax from 20 guilders per household to 35 per month (with exemption from the groups of people who are already being spared ), which reduces the Country's contribution to Selikor, yields an additional revenue of 237 million in the year 2020.

The current economic and therefore financial situation in which Curaçao finds itself is "not normal," Gijsbertha told the Members of Parliament, referring in particular to the "Venezuela effect"; or the negative impact of the crisis in the neighboring country on the local economy.

The Minister stressed that the situation is serious. “Doing nothing is not an option!”

 

That is why the parliament, as well as the social partners - employers and trade unions - are asked to contribute to the thinking process.




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