The 2025 Annual Report of the Council of Advice exposes an uncomfortable truth: it is not a lack of knowledge, but a lack of implementation and political priority that is holding us back.
The 2025 Annual Report of the Council of Advice of Curaçao should be required reading for every politician. Not because it identifies a new problem, but precisely because it confirms that we have known about this problem for years and have failed to address it adequately.
The figures are stark. According to data from the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) included in the annual report, 30.4 percent of households lived below the monetary poverty line in 2023. Using the subjective poverty measure, the figure was 29.9 percent, while multidimensional poverty stood at 7.9 percent.
These are different methods of measuring poverty, but together they demonstrate that economic security remains fragile for a substantial part of our population.
Even more significant is the Council's observation that poverty reduction has appeared in virtually every government program since 2010. Yet many of those plans have been implemented only partially or not at all. Even a draft poverty policy prepared by the Ministry of Social Development, Labor and Welfare (SOAW) was never followed through.
That is Curaçao's real problem: we do not have a shortage of policies. We have a shortage of implementation.
Article 23 Requires Choices
Article 23, paragraph 1, of the Constitution of Curaçao is not merely an attractive constitutional statement. The economic security of the population, the distribution of prosperity and the promotion of well-being are explicitly identified as responsibilities of government.
The Council is clear: the government has an obligation to make efforts to alleviate structural poverty. Parliament, in turn, must ensure that the government fulfills those responsibilities.
But fulfilling that duty costs money. And that is precisely where politics begins.
Professor Schilder writes in the same annual report that financial scarcity forces governments to make painful but necessary choices: what should take priority — good healthcare, a clean environment or economic security?
Ultimately, these are political choices.
That is why we must look much more critically at how the government uses additional revenues.
Where Does the Extra Guilder Go?
Curaçao's population is aging. Pressure on the AOV old-age pension system and other social provisions is increasing. At the same time, we must strengthen our economy, increase labor-force participation and broaden the tax base.
During the election campaign, PAR presented proposals aimed at strengthening the AOV system, including increasing the AOV benefit and using revenue from the tourist entry fee as part of its financing. The party also advocated reforming and broadening the tax system.
Because when government has additional financial room, our automatic response should not be to increase structural personnel costs for civil servants and comparable groups.
A structural revenue surplus should not become an excuse for permanently increasing expenditure without first determining where the greatest needs in society actually lie.
Healthcare. Education. AOV. Economic security. Economic development.
Those should be our priorities.
This is not an attack on civil servants. A professional government requires capable and properly compensated public servants. But we must be willing to ask whether every additional guilder committed to structural personnel expenses creates greater social value than that same guilder invested in healthcare, education, economic security or economic growth.
That is not merely an accounting discussion.
It is at the heart of political responsibility.
From Policy to Results
The Council itself warns that poverty reduction must not remain trapped in a cycle of policymaking and analysis without concrete measures and measurable results.
We should therefore stop asking only:
“What is the government's policy?”
The better questions are:
What is the objective?
How much money has been budgeted?
What has actually been implemented?
How many people have been reached?
And what has demonstrably improved?
A social program that exists on paper but is practically inaccessible to vulnerable citizens does not constitute effective social protection.
The Council specifically points to complicated procedures, administrative burdens and insufficient assistance as factors that cause vulnerable citizens to abandon attempts to obtain the support available to them.
The Choice Is Ours
The 2025 Annual Report does not provide us with a simple solution to poverty.
It gives us something more important: a mirror.
We know where poverty exists.
We know its causes.
We know the neighborhoods affected.
We know which groups are vulnerable.
We know the demographic trends.
And we know that previous plans have failed to produce sufficient results.
That leaves only one question:
Do we have the political courage to align our financial priorities with the reality facing our society?
A budget surplus is not, by itself, a measure of success.
A society in which nearly one-third of households live below the monetary poverty line, while essential public services and economic security remain under pressure, demands different priorities.
Curaçao does not need another report.
Curaçao needs implementation.
Above all, it needs political choices that once again place people, their economic security and the future of our country at the center of policymaking.
Drs. Luigi A. Faneyte MSc., CFE, CICA, CCS
Economist, financial expert and parliamentary staff member for PAR in the Curaçao Parliament