WILLEMSTAD – Questions from Dutch Defense personnel stationed in Aruba and Bonaire ultimately exposed a calculation error that resulted in their colleagues in Curaçao and Sint Maarten receiving excessive overseas allowances during the final months of 2025.
The issue came to light after military personnel in Aruba and Bonaire contacted union VBM about what they considered a surprisingly large difference between their overseas compensation and the amounts being paid on the other two islands.
Defense investigated the discrepancy and discovered that the difference was not the result of a deliberate policy decision.
Instead, an external service provider had supplied an incorrect purchasing-power index for Curaçao and Sint Maarten in October 2025.
The index is used to calculate the purchasing-power component of the overseas allowance paid to personnel stationed outside the Netherlands. Its purpose is to compensate for differences in living costs so that employees retain approximately the same purchasing power they would have at home.
Factors used in the calculation include local prices and the exchange rate between the currency used at the posting and the euro. Updated index information is provided twice annually.
Because the October index for Curaçao and Sint Maarten was too high, personnel stationed on those islands received excessive allowances in November and December.
Aruba and Bonaire were not affected by the same error, according to military union VBM.
Once the mistake was confirmed, the external provider delivered corrected data and Defense decided to begin applying the new figures in February 2026.
Defense also decided not to recover the excess payments from employees in Curaçao and Sint Maarten.
The episode illustrates how differences in allowances among Defense personnel stationed on neighboring Caribbean islands can result from highly technical calculations involving purchasing power, prices and currency movements.
What remains unknown is the size of the discrepancy. Available information does not show how much more individual personnel in Curaçao and Sint Maarten received compared with their colleagues elsewhere or the total amount that was overpaid.