statia.jhtm.nl (EN)
|
| statia.jhtm.nl (EN) |
|
|
|
Note: All references hereunder are to the Dutch National budget and therefore all in the Dutch language.
The national budget is very informative. It is not appropriate to go through the technique of the entire national budget at this point and I will therefore confine myself to a few important points. On the third Tuesday of September ("Prinsjesdag" or "Budget Day"), the national budget prepared by the various departments for the coming calendar year will be presented to the House of Representatives and later in the year (November/December), the various budgets will be debated, motions from the House of Representatives will be processed or not, after which the budget will be adopted by law.
Via the link in the previous paragraph, you can click on the budget law for Kingdom Relations and the BES fund (the latter is the BES equivalent of the Infrastructure, Municipality, Provincial and Delta Funds in the national budget), as can be seen in the left-hand column. Under Parliamentary Papers (top right) you can find references to specific aspects or adjustments in the budget.
In the middle is the table of contents in which each chapter or paragraph can be clicked on. The policy agenda and priorities are mainly textual and outline. The Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations focuses with a programme of administrative development on increasing the quality and effectiveness of the public administration on the six islands in the Caribbean part of the Kingdom, in particular the Caribbean Netherlands, as is to be read here. A well-functioning, transparent administration is a basic condition for having an impact on specific and priority themes.
The various policy articles indicate what will happen specifically and how much money will be involved (and in which year). Under Onder Article 8 (Reconstruction of Windward Islands) I read, for example, that for the Reconstruction on St. Eustatius in 2018 3.067 million euro was spent and that in 2019 nothing was budgeted for. Under Article 4 (Promoting socio-economic structure) I read that a total of 11.198 million euro has been budgeted, of which 55% is legally obliged (this is therefore not a budget that can be used in an alternative way; there are fixed contracts from which payments are "legally obliged"). More to the bottom you can read the explanation that applies to assignments within the framework of the Dutch Caribbean; here it reads, among other things, "Depending on the demand and need of the local government in the Dutch Caribbean, from the budget of Kingdom Relations targeted assignments can be paid to organizations whose goal is to promote good governance and healthy public finances".
Under 2.3 Overview of non-legally obligatory expenditures and destination I read that 3.53 million euro is still available for assignments within the framework of the Dutch Caribbean (for 2019). Perhaps there are plans for this at the MinBZK or at the local government, but the national budget is not that detailed.
The OLSE budget for 2019 is adopted on 18 November 2018. It is only available in Dutch.
May 7th 2019 there is first budget change for 2019.
April 30th 2019 the annual account over 2016 is begin published.