No Capital loans for BES-islands

Bonaire, St. Eustatius and Saba, public entities of the Netherlands, will not be able to get loans to finance investments in, for example, the infrastructure on short term. This writes The Daily Herald. Dutch Minister of Home Affairs and Kingdom Relations Ronald Plasterk said this during a general debate with the Permanent Committee for Kingdom Relations of the Second Chamber of the Dutch Parliament on Thursday about the control tasks of the Committee for Financial Supervision CFT.

Member of the Second Chamber Roelof van Laar of the Labour Party PvdA has asked why it wasn’t possible for the public entities to secure low-interest loans via the Netherlands. Curaçao and St. Maarten are able to do so through the Kingdom Law on Financial Supervision once the CFT has given the green light.Minister Plasterk said that the public entities may not be able to borrow on the capital market, but that the islands were able to get zero per cent interest loans from the Dutch ministries and that they could make provisions on their own budget.

Van Laar pointed out that, financially and budget-wise, things had been going very well on Saba. He said that in the Netherlands, municipalities and provinces were able to get loans. He wanted to know why the minister was being so cautious about capital loans for the Caribbean Netherlands.

Plasterk didn’t want to make any promises. He said that this matter would be taken along in the evaluation of the new constitutional relations and the financial laws regulating the three islands. He said that, so far, the islands knew how to find their way to the ministries to get financing for their projects, even though this route involved a bit of an extra burden at times.