Tuitt proposed as
island’s CFT rep
PHILIPSBURG--St. Maarten has proposed former Finance Commissioner Roland Tuitt as its representative on the Financial Supervisory Committee CFT. His name was submitted to the Dutch Government on Wednesday.
Tuitt, a certified public accountant (CPA), was a commissioner in the late 1990s with St. Maarten Patriotic Alliance (SPA), the predecessor of National Alliance. He is also a former parliamentarian.
Finance Commissioner Roy Marlin told The Daily Herald he was confident Tuitt would represent St. Maarten well, based on his background and knowledge.
Marlin added that the choice of Tuitt showed that the constitutional process was too important for party politics or excluding anyone with the proper experience and knowledge to further the island's cause.
The supervision regime, which will be applicable for the Netherlands Antilles, is not in place yet, pending publication of the Consensus Kingdom Resolution for financial supervision. Now that Parliament, the Island Councils and the Council of Ministers of the Kingdom all have given their approval, the resolution will soon be published in the Dutch Staatsblad.
In anticipation of the CFT entering into force, the board has submitted informal advice on the draft 2009 budgets of the Netherlands Antilles as a whole and Curaçao as an island territory. This was not yet possible for St. Maarten, because its draft budget still has to be submitted.
The CFT board is confident that its recommendations will be followed by the entities. The board also hopes to receive from the entities soon the regulation regarding corporate governance, as this was due August 1. Within two weeks after the resolution has entered into force, CFT shall evaluate whether the entities and the Netherlands have drawn joint conclusions with regard to the regulation.
Based on the experience gained with regard to the financial consequences of Hurricane Omar, CFT has resolved to submit an advice to the State Secretary of Interior Affairs and Kingdom Relations with a proposal on how to deal with the direct consequences of Omar and of future calamities.
It now appears that the article in the Kingdom Resolution that provides for these types of cases is not sufficiently clear to all parties involved. Furthermore, CFT has established that the debts from 2006 and 2007 still have to be settled. This has a negative impact on the execution of the budget, especially with regard to available funds for the budget execution for the last months of the current year.
