WILLEMSTAD – The Curaçao government has acknowledged that delays, staffing shortages and lack of administrative capacity continue to undermine efforts to improve the country’s financial management system.
The admission is included in the March 2026 Financial Management Report, which provides an update on the government’s “Roadmap” program aimed at achieving a clean audit opinion and strengthening financial governance.
According to the report, many reform projects have experienced delays or face the risk of falling behind schedule. One of the main causes identified is that financial management improvements received insufficient political priority, causing decisions to remain pending too long and implementation within ministries to progress too slowly.
The government also states that many critical positions within the financial administration remain unfilled, while ministries lack sufficient staff capacity to handle both daily operations and major reform projects simultaneously. Recruitment efforts between 2023 and 2025 only partially solved the problem.
The report further warns that the original phased planning of the Roadmap has become distorted due to overlapping delays, creating what officials describe as a “harmonica effect” that has weakened focus and execution.
Another issue highlighted is that the reform program mainly performs a monitoring role and has limited authority to enforce implementation across ministries, since much of the responsibility remains decentralized.
The government now says a lasting behavioral and cultural change throughout the public sector is necessary to achieve sustainable improvements in financial management.
To support the reform effort, Curaçao received a subsidy of more than €1.28 million from the Temporary Work Organization (TWO) for external technical assistance and project management support. The subsidy was formally granted on March 30, 2026.